


Pretty Boy

by missdorothysnarker



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Angst, Child Abuse, Classism, Ephebophilia, Fluff, Graphic Violence, Hellhounds, Imperialism, M/M, Minor Character Death, Objectification, Obsession, Orientalism, Prostitution, Q is a faunlet, Racism, Silva is a pimp, Slow Burn, Smut, and now with sodomy!, every other fucking ism, inspired by Dickens and Wilde, period prejudice regarding race sexuality and gender, sale of virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:46:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 26
Words: 30,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1013134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missdorothysnarker/pseuds/missdorothysnarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Victorian AU: Bond is a disillusioned government operative who is given a mission to infiltrate child-prostitute-procurer Silva's underground network in London's East End. He must pose as a gentleman interested in purchasing a pubescent virgin in order to discover and destroy Silva's web of exploitation and abuse. He is not expecting to become personally involved in the life of one fourteen-year-old boy known only as Q, a former street rat and the prize possession of Silva's brothel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic I've written in over a year, and first posted to AO3, so please bear that in mind with concrit. That said, I haven't had a chance to edit this, and it is no doubt horribly grammatically/historically inaccurate (although very loosely inspired by W.T. Stead's controversial investigative journalism into Victorian child prostitution circa 1883). 
> 
> Trigger warnings for: underage, age difference (Q is fourteen years of age, Bond is 30-something), problematic power dynamics, dub con, abuse of authority, although no graphic sexual content as of yet.

Commander Bond was a man gifted with a sense of presence that slid smoothly into absence, one that allowed to him vanish whenever needed, fading like a shadow into anonymity of busy city streets across Her Majesty's Empire. Yet when he wanted to be noticed – mostly when beautiful women were involved – or had no need to assume covert identity, the force of his personality was palpable, that of a predator coiled and ready to strike with a restless energy to be channeled into the pleasures available to an officer and a gentlemen like himself.

Unlike other men of his rank and age, he did not have considerable facial hair, but wore a rakish scruff when not clean-shaven; his fair hair was shorn short to his broad skull, emphasizing his deep-set, startlingly pale blue eyes, the mulish pout of his lips and snub of his nose, broken many times at the end of a brute fist. 

He walked the streets to his club with a military stride, his raw-boned face revealing nothing. Bond was in no mood to meet with M for the latest in a succession of dangerous clandestine missions, but M was not a man to be trifled with in his best moods. 

Boodles, M's offices of choice, was an old-fogey's club as absurd as its name, filled with the requisite sons of the aristocracy and upper-middle-classes reading the papers and smoking cigars; in other words, deadly dull, and not a woman in sight. M was in his private rooms, waiting behind his mahogany desk, his hands folded, his ashen hair falling across a furrowed brow. He always looked so damnably serious, despite being only a few years older than Bond himself; having passed the rigours of the civil service examination while he was still carousing at Cambridge. No doubt it boded that this mission was far from the lark Bond desired. 

'Ah, Commander Bond, how good of you to join me, only three-quarters of an hour late. A commendable achievement.' 

M at least did not lack a sense of humour, which Bond appreciated. 

'Mallory, you know how I strive to please you,'

'So I should hope, especially in regarding your new assignment,' M's face turned grave, and he fiddled with the signet ring on his smallest finger, his one nervous habit. 

'Do tell, you know how I adore novelty. Mind if I smoke?' Without waiting for a response, Bond lit one of his prized Egyptian cigarettes, tipped with opium. M's nostrils flared in distaste. 

'Far be it from me, or anyone else for that matter, to stop you from doing precisely as you please when it comes to self-destructive or indulgent habits. My predecessor gave up long ago. But as for the operation – '

'Let me hazard a guess – undercover, a exotic locale, some imperial interest to be protected?' 

'No. For once, this mission is close to home. In London, to be precise. And not an imperial interest so much as for the greater national good: to suppress the vice which poisons our capital, and threatens future generations...'

Bond caught his gaze; hooded eyes bright, as he languidly inhaled the smouldering cigarette.

'Now you've begun to pique my interest. I haven't had an assignment in London in God knows how long. But vice? You disappoint me, Mallory. Joining the ranks of the moral crusaders when I should have thought you'd be above their sanctimonious alarmism. And you know how I, of all your agents, enjoy my personal vices. I never thought I'd say this, but perhaps you've got the wrong man for the job.'

'I know more that I'd like about your personal vices, well-documented as they are in your file. But I think even you would object to the sin we have orders to eradicate. That is the child slavery and prostitution running rife in the bowels of the East End.'

Bond didn't recoil but his eyes flicked with thought. He was a man who enjoyed carnality, had lost his virginity while a boy at Eton with a maid, resulting in his being sent down. It had been best bit of his early education, and since his time in the Navy, and later the secret service, he had come into contact with all manner of sexual deviancy, ranging from buggery, rape, incest and sadism. All of which he had no personal inclination towards, preferring instead girls well beyond adolescence, and women in their ripest of blooms. But child prostitutes – Mallory was right, they were another evil altogether. 

'Alright, you've caught me. But I take it you don't want a public expose of what goes on in the slums, no shocking sensational piece in the Pall Mall?'

M shuddered. 'God, no. There are some things the populous of this country should never know, or anarchy would run riot, if they only knew what was lurking in the alleyways and side-streets, just beyond their respectable neighbourhoods... It'd be a scandal; one to shake their belief in common decency, in the ability of their government to protect those most vulnerable to exploitation.'

'Heaven forbid that fallen women and abused children should appear in reality as well as in the pages of Oliver Twist,' said Bond with a sardonic smile. 

'It is not our place to judge our orders, or those who dispatch them. It is our duty only to purge the streets of immorality as best we can. We cannot alleviate the suffering of all those working in the sex trade, but at least dens of depravity should be rid of children under sixteen. You may recall the age of consent across Britain is legally thirteen, which some MPs in parliament have been trying to raise, much to the fierce opposition from those in the House of Lords who'd rather not land any of their illustrious sons in gaol for immorality.'

'Yes, yes. But what am I to do about that?' He impatiently flicked ash across M's desk.

'All in good time, Bond. And do try not to set fire to my room if at all possible. Of course there are far too many brothel-keepers and virgin procurers to crush at once, but there is one deviant in particular who is leader in the field of finding and selling children to the highest bidders - a Signor Silva, whose name would suggest Continental origins. He heads a large network of madams and prostitutes, specialising in the very young of both sexes, trading British children to colonies and colonial children to the East End bordellos. His operations must be ceased, with as little public disclosure as possible.'

'Kill him, then?'

'If necessary. But leaving as little mess as possible. What you need to do is disguise yourself as a gentlemen of specialised taste, one interested in purchasing a virgin child, so as to avoid contracting disease or out of genuine perversion, whatever you decide. You must lull Silva and his associates into trusting you with some of the inner workings of his organisation. Buy the confidences of his whores or ruffians if you must. Become as involved as you can, and you must insist on personally meeting the man in charge.'

'And the children?'

'What about them? You can do nothing for them until Silva is annihilated. And then, who knows? Orphanages, schools, reformatories; they are not our primary concern once they are out of physical harm. Of course they will all be mostly likely mentally damaged, but most street children are, sexually abused and abandoned or not.'

'How comforting.' Bond was wry, and longing for some good whiskey, neat. He was eager to get out of the suffocating heat of M's office, with its overstuffed furniture and untouched precious book collections, his bland paintings of landscapes. 

'Well, I can see you are anxious to leave, and I hope to begin. I rely on your utmost discretion, Bond, and will await word of your contact. Godspeed to you on your mission. And do try to return alive, if at all possible,' M said, looking tired; the skin around his eye sockets pulled taunt. 

Bond gave a satiric bow and left. He took a hansom back to his rooms, his skin thrumming with energy. 

Child prostitutes! White slavery! Who would have thought M's operations would turn to the stuff of the lurid penny papers, which provided propaganda for the most intolerable, self-righteous of moral guardians? It was the kind of thing which generally turned his stomach, but in all seriousness, sexual exploitation of any kind was sickening, and that of children... Well, it didn't bear thinking about. 

Soon enough he'd be plunged into the cesspit of brothels, gin palaces, dens of iniquity; of opium and oblivion. Of course Bond had slummed in the East End before, when he was young and thrill-seeking, and life was just a game to him. It still was even now, in a different way. 

He hadn't seen anything so depraved at the time that had made him ashamed, but he had been blind to so much in those days... 

The memory of Vesper Lynd swallowed him whole for a moment and left him breathless, sagging against the window of the cab. She had been so beautiful, and so young. The most talented actress of her generation, with eyes like violets and long dark curls, an ivory face like a cameo of a luminous Madonna. She had played Ophelia for the final time, fifteen years ago. Now her bones were nestled at the bottom of the Thames. 

Bond berated himself sternly. Now was not the time for painful visions long gone. Action, not introspection, was the maxim he lived by, and it would not do to change it now.


	2. Chapter 2

James Bond was a man who took the business of subterfuge seriously. 

Today he had assumed the alias of a Mr. John Lennox, who boasted a name as unremarkable as his own. Lennox was a scion of the nouveaux riche industrialist class, whose very bearing was tinged with the air of ostentatious extravagance, in order to counter a family tree that lacked illustrious – and noble – personages. He was a man who could have afforded much better than a common hackney coach, no doubt had any number of carriages of his own, yet was trying, in his unsubtle manner, to be inconspicuous. Bond had even made an attempt at growing a respectable pair of muttonchops, but he had looked so absurd with them that even a man of unrefined taste, like Lennox, would have objected. 

Bond had a gift for affecting the characteristics of the sort of people he roundly despised. Donning a bespoke suit, a silk top-hat, a silver-tipped walking stick and a creamy pair of calf-skin gloves from the most expensive haberdashery house in Piccadilly, he certainly looked the part of an entitled, slightly vulgar gentleman with a penchant for immorality.

The cab driver dropped him in front of a shabby music hall, the sign for which - reading 'Parrot's Playhouse', looked as if it had been painted by a drunken illiterate - just off the notorious Radcliffe highway leading to the docks. It was only half-past six, but the sky was gloaming and bitter cold; the fog releasing an icy drizzle that soaked Bond to the bone. Dark figures were crouched in the alleyways and corners, huddled in the shadows, filthy and ragged; miserable specimens of humanity who eyed him with either bleak apathy or overt avarice. They could have been the grim illustrations that accompanied Henry Mayhew's appalling report on London Labour and the London Poor, come to life.

Bond schooled his face into a mask of indifference, his black cape sweeping impressively. In the morning he had been given a tip from an old friend from his navy days, now working as an inspector at Scotland Yard. 

+

'There's a girl you might ask for, a lady of the night. She's said to be one of Silva's favourites; a great beauty with half-Oriental ancestry. She hangs round the music halls nights, she and some of the other girls do an act, caused quite a scandal a few months back, all bawdy songs and Parisian dances. See if she'll let anything slide about the Senor, that'd be my advise.'

Years ago, when they were youths, they'd been taken for brothers, even twins at times, they looked so alike. They shared the same blunt-faced, fair-haired good looks, although Alec's eyes were a sharp, feline green instead of Bond's frosted blue. 

'Thanks Alec, much appreciated as always. Do you have her name, by any chance?'

'It was something strange. Started with an 'S'. Damn it all, let me think...'

'Immensely helpful, that,' said Bond wryly. 

'Shut up, you. Ungrateful bastard. It must be in the papers, posters, handbills. Something like Serpentine.'

'Serpentine? How very Satanic. No wonder all the do-gooders were up in arms.'

+

As Bond made to enter the theatre, a harried-looking man with a drooping, sandy mustache rushed up to him, evidently not one of poverty-stricken drudges who lurked outside. His trousers were muddied by the streets, and he thrust a pamphlet into Bond's hands blaring the headline 'THIS WAY TO THE PIT OF HELL'. 

'Jolly little leaflet you've got there, I must say,'

'Sir! It's not too late to turn back now and save your soul from eternal damnation, with the Lord's good grace!' the man said earnestly. Bond looked at him with a distaste only half-feigned, and dropped his pamphlet in the swollen gutter. 

'I'm afraid, my good man, my corruption is at a stage far too advanced for the help of any man, even God himself.' 

With that, he turned into the dank interior of the music hall, which smelled of rotting flowers; upholstered in cheap crimson plush and chipped gold paint. 

The plump grinning manager, his beard stiff with wax, rushed to escort him to the best seat in the house which overlooked the gaslights of the stage where heavily-painted women danced in little more than gossamer shifts, their gauzy folds revealing a communal lack of corsets. 

'Is there anything my lord would like? Pine-Apple ice? Malt liquor? Mint water? Or perhaps I can interest you in some feminine company in your box this evening?'

Bond lit a cigar with a lazy air. 

'Yes, I think I'd like to invite a girl up to amuse me.'

The man bowed deeply, and the boards beneath his feet creaked ominously. 'Of course, sir. Do you see one who appeals? Do you have a preference for a girl with golden curls, or perhaps locks of raven-black? Or something more exotic?'

'Exotic, I think. English roses are so dull these days, a penny a posy. All rosy-cheeks and bad teeth. If you've loved one, you've love them all, really.'

Perfectly blasé, thought Bond. He was such a scoundrel, he almost despised himself. 

'I think I have just the girl you desire. Allow me moment, if you please.'

Bond waved him away, smoking like a chimney. The air was stale and suffocating, rank with the sweat of labourers and cheap perfume, greasy pastries and pies. But the slum-dwellers were no more shocking than those in Shanghai or Bombay, or any of the cities he'd seen on his travels. Beneath beauty and wealth always lay filth and misery. 

In places like this he was always reminded of Vesper, despite himself. She had been an actress in a place far less sordid, a lily on a gilded stage, and he had been lost for her as he had been for no other. But there again, the surface appearance was only a convenient costume, nothing more than fiction. 

+ 

He was disrupted from his reverie by awareness that he was no longer alone in his box. The manager, Mr. Parrot, escorted a tall, dark-haired girl of sylph-like beauty. She was of mixed ancestry, evident in the planes of her delicately moulded face and her almond-shaped eyes, which resembled those of a mournful animal. Her nails were long and varnished red, as were her lips, and unlike the girls onstage in their filmy costumes, she was dressed in an Oriental-style attire of rich black-and-gold silk. 

She was the sort of woman he would have desired above all else, not long ago. 

Parrot was smug, aware that his choice had pleased. 'Mr. Lennox, may I introduce the finest of our garden of flowers here at Parrot's Playhouse, Miss Severine, of the Far East,'

Severine said nothing, but gave a shy smile and an attractive curtesy. 'It is an honour, sir,' she murmured, her voice low and throaty with a touch of an accent. 

+ 

'I shall leave you to get more closely acquainted. Do let me know if you require any further assistance, Mr. Lennox,' said Parrot, with an oily smile.  
He left, and the velveteen drapes fell closed behind him, obscuring them from sight. They were alone. 

Bond invited the girl to take a seat, and she did so with a demure manner, looking at him through sooty lashes. She was obviously well-practiced at the process of seduction, although she couldn't be of more than seventeen years of age. It was painful to watch her contrived coyness, talented an actress as she was; even more so when he considered that once he had not given the slightest thought to preying on girls like her, simply because he could.

'Miss Severine – if I may – I understand you have certain connexions which would be of personal interest to me,' Bond said, watching her carefully. 

Her smile dropped and her eyes turned wary almost instantly. She feigned ignorance. 'I'm afraid I do not understand what sir is asking of me. Of what connexions do you speak?'

' My apologies. Let me clarify. Certain men, like myself, have a rarified taste, which others do not share and so condemn. A predilection for the singular beauty, an untouched purity, found only in youth. I think you understand my meaning.'

Severine avoided his eyes, her bird-like hands twisting restlessly in her lap. She did not reply. 

'I should make it worth your while, should you prove to be helpful and discrete in your dealings for me. '  
She looked up then, her dark eyes dull, dispirited. 'I will do as you ask. There are always those who pander to the appetites of men like yourself.' Her voice was bitter beyond her years, and despite himself, Bond snapped at her.

'Careful, girl. You wouldn't want one thinking that you were unwilling or untrustworthy in performing your task, now would you?' 

He could not remember sounding so threatening to so young a woman before, one who was merely a slip of a girl, but he didn't allow himself to feel remorse. 

'No, sir.' 

'Good. Both I and your clever employer are happy to hear it. I'm sure you will provide me with only the best on offer.'

'Of course, sir.'

'Splendid. Here a reward for your lovely compliance.' He slipped her a guinea, and she secreted it away inside her glossy skirt, her face emotionless. She waited, her head bowed. 

'You may go. Tell Parrot I was delighted with your society this evening, you are a true pearl.' Bond bent to kiss her slender white hand, limp as a beached fish in his grasp. She curtsied again and turned to leave, but he pulled her back abruptly. 

'I have been remiss to mention that I wish to meet with your proprietor, to ensure the pristine condition of my purchase.' She stiffened. 

'As you wish.' 

Bond watched as the heavy curtain cords swung like serpents in her wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Q hasn't showed up yet, but he will in the next chapter, I promise, for the fated Night of Deflowerment or something. 
> 
> Has Daniel Craig been in a non-20th century period piece? I can't think of any, which makes it difficult to imagine him as an archetypal Victorian gentleman, complete with the requisite facial hair and hat. Let me know if I'm mistaken; I know Ben Whishaw has been in plenty of period pieces. 
> 
> Hope whoever's reading is enjoying, and any kudos and/or comments are much appreciated. 
> 
> Again, this work is un-beta'd, so apologies on that account.


	3. Chapter 3

The brothel was like none Bond had ever been to before. Of course he had been to various vice-dens, whorehouses, bordellos from Paris to Cairo to Kyoto; even frequented a courtesan's boudoir on one particularly memorable mission. 

Silva's lair was as gaudy and grand as the best of them; filled with rich sensuous materials from wine-coloured velvet walls and carpeting to a sumptuous champagne-hued chandelier; paintings of languorous, half-nude models hung on the walls and a gilt-edged grand staircase curved into the shadows upstairs... 

He had been led into a parlor by a pertly pretty young maid, and made to wait while she fetched her master, a jaunty ragtime tune being incongruously played on the grand-piano which stood in the corner. Bond couldn't see much of the musician, apart from his mane of yellow hair and his white summer suit, an odd thing to be wearing in London in the depths of November. 

The song finished with a flourish, and the man turned to face Bond, his face intent, olive-hued, a small smile playing on his full lips. His dark eyes were affable, but had a dangerous gleam. The yellow hair was a wig in the style of nearly a century before. Bond knew who he was before he opened his mouth.

+

'Ah, mister Lennox, many thanks for indulging me. Many men would have been more impatient to get to the matter at hand, and I cannot blame them. Much as I love my business, I grow weary from time to time, but then I see another face like an angel and my passion returns to me.' 

His voice was low, Latin-smooth and self-aware.

Bond said nothing, face impassive. Silva crossed the room to his cut-crystal decanters. 

'Do you care for a drink before we talk business, Mr Lennox? Cordial, or sherry, or absinthe perhaps? I confess take I pride in my collection of liquor, my other love in life.'

'No thank you.' Silva laughed and poured an amber-coloured finger for himself. 

'I see you are a man who prefers a clear head on such occasions. No chance of dulling the exquisite sensation of the flesh, yes? Severine has told me that you are in the best I have to offer. She is one of my best, but alas, she is not untouched. Far from it. But I have plenty of unpicked little flowers in my garden, some barely in bloom.'

Bond showed interest, his eyes alight. 

'Ah, I see you also appreciate the beauty of youth. That we share, Mr Lennox. Do you have a preference for the sex of the child? I have both a beautiful girl-child, and a lovely little boy whom I picked up not so very long ago as a barefoot little street Arab plaguing the slum. Both are virgins, and you understand that their purity comes at a considerable cost.'

'My only particulars are that they are beautiful and virginal. Their sex...' Bond shrugged. 

'I am delighted to find you so open; many child-lovers are so fixed in their preferences for boys or girls that they are blind to the delights of the other sex entirely. In this case I think I have just what you desire... the boy I spoke of, unsullied, and of a beauty so rare it almost makes a sinner like myself believe in God. You shall see for yourself.'

Bond's pulse throbbed at Silva's words, sickened, but at the same time stirred despite himself. 

'Of course, you understand that it is more difficult to prove the chasteness of a boy than a girl, but you may have him inspected and you will find he has not been used.'

'That is not necessary. I have no wish to delay.'

Silva seemed amused at his eagerness. 

'Of course. Your desire is my command, Mr Lennox. Would tonight be acceptable? I can easily have my best room made up for you, and the boy prepared while you eat dinner.'

He watched Bond with that damnably sly look of his, and Bond wondered if he knew. If he knew who Bond was, and knew that this was what he wanted. He wanted to bludgeon the smug swine until his ugly yellow wig was bloody. 

'That would be more than acceptable,' he said, moistening his dry lips with his tongue like a dog in hunger. 

'It will be my pleasure, Mr Lennox. I look forward to a long association between us, one that will benefit us both.'

Silva rang a silver bell, and the pretty maid from before emerged. 

'Go fetch Severine, and have her ready Q for his debut. Be quick about it!'

At Bond's inquiring look, he shrugged his shoulders, smiling. 

'Severine was the one who found him, you see, and brought him to me. She's taken him under her wing like a mother hen, more so with him than the other little ones. It is an amusement of mine to give them names of the letters of the alphabet. Severine was S. Quinto prefers only Q, but you may call him what you like. Tonight he is yours.'

He gave a wolfish grin, and Bond gave one back. 

+

Severine entered the room silently, dipping a curtesy to Bond, her hair tumbling down and her breasts half-exposed in the low neckline of her vermillion dress. 

'Ah, you were quicker than I had expected, dear Severine.' He pulled her close and wrapped a proprietary arm around her waist. 'Is little Q ready for his premiere in the arms of Mr Lennox?'

'Yes,' she said, her face drawn.  
'Well? Show him the way to his suite for the evening, my oriental orchid!' he prodded her bustle as if she were cattle. 

'Yes sir.' 

More than anything Bond wanted to bury a bullet in between his snake-like eyes, but it would only hinder his cause now. 

He followed Severine up the winding golden staircase, hearing hushed whispers and laughs from rooms above in silence, surprised to find himself sweating slightly. She brought him to a room at the end of a hall, and caught his arm as he made to go in. 

'Please, sir. He's... he's so small, and I'm afraid he'll hurt terribly. Please, be gentle with him.' Her eyes searched his, imploringly, and he wanted to shake her, ask if she thought him to be a cruel man. But he remembered himself, and moved free of her grip. 

'Of course. My god, girl, I'm not a monster.'

'Yes sir. Please forgive me for speaking out of turn.' She bowed her head and turned away, leaving him along before the room. He pushed the door open, as tense as if he were expecting assailants inside. 

+

The gas lights in the room were dimmed, candles giving a soft, warm glow. His eyes snapped to the naked boy lying on the crimson bed, evidently asleep. He stole closer, irrationally afraid of awaking him. So this was the infamous Q, whose virtue was worth £25 to a man like Silva, and who inspired such fierce devotion in one who should be his rival. 

Bond was unfamiliar with children, and thought the boy could have been anywhere from twelve years of age to the fourteen that was claimed, although his luminous white skin was entirely hairless. Most boys on the cusp of puberty sprouted body hair of some kind, but from the shadowed pits of his arms to his tender little cock he was as bald as a baby, likely shaven by Severine's careful hands. 

He was of angelic appearance, with dark curls tumbling across a high forehead, smooth with sleep, thick, inky lashes cast shadows over his cheeks, still childishly plump but fine-boned. His lips were lush and – my God, the boy was painted! Like a little whore! As he drew closer he saw the boy's lips were rouged, as were his cheeks, smeared a little in sleep. 

Bond drew a deep breath, inhaling a sweet, nauseating familiar odor. Chloroform and laudanum, from the smell of him. Did they render all the children unconscious for the initial pain of the act? Was it part of the depraved appeal? Or did Severine hope to spare him from the indignities she suffered?

He had little time to ponder, as the boy began to stir, making muzzy bleating sounds as he surfaced from sleep. Bond caught a glimpse of agate-green eyes, dilated then contracting, before the boy gave a cry of surprise, and he reflexively clamped his hand over that stained pretty mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we finally meet Q, although he is mostly unconscious in his first meeting with Bond. 
> 
> £25 pounds for a virginal child prostitute doesn't sound like much, but some were going for only £5 in 1885, so Silva is a greedy bastard. 
> 
> As always, comments/kudos appreciated. Thanks for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

'Hush, hush,' Bond whispered, transfixed by the way the boy's eyes were wide with fright like a cornered animal, rosy lips moving brokenly against his callused palm. 

'I'm not going to hurt you.'

One might almost think the boy had no idea of what he had been procured for - but how could he not have known, even sheltered by Severine? Even the most innocent of children - which Q was not, had he truly been a street brat as Silva claimed - would sense that something untoward was happening behind closed doors in this establishment, forbidden acts occurring all around. 

+

The boy bit him savagely, his little sharp pearls (all his own, Silva proudly maintained) almost drawing blood. Bond hissed in surprise and nearly smacked the brat across his flushed face, but he refrained from hurting children, and if at all possible women. Besides, the boy wasn't screaming for help; he only bared his teeth and snarled at Bond, about as fearsome as a kitten unsheathing its claws. 

Bond gave a half-smirk. 'They didn't warn me about you. You're a bloody little alley cat! Maybe I should ask for a reimbursement, hmm?'

The boy only scowled, and satisfied he was unmolested for the time being, he drew the bedclothes over his slight frame. Not quickly enough to prevent Bond from glimpsing his long and unwieldy feet, the bottoms of which were silvery with old scars. 

'I'm afraid a reimbursement is impossible, Mr. Bond. Nothing personal, of course, just my business policy, you understand,'

Bond froze at the sound of that silky, self-satisfied drawl coming from the doorway. Silva. Good God, how could he have been so blind, so careless? He locked eyes with the boy who clutched at the sheets in fear, body tense as a coiled spring. 

'Now, I advise that you make no sudden movements, Mr. Bond, and keep those bear-paw hands of yours where I can see them, capiche? Nod if you understand me, there's a good man.' 

Bond did as he was told, gritting his teeth in fury. The boy's eyes bore into his own, seeming to beseech him to do nothing hasty, if only for his own sake. 

'Now you are wondering how I captured the great Commander James Bond, elite agent of her Majesty's empire, yes? Well, you see I am at an advantage, for most pillars of British society are not immune to the charms of a pretty girl – or boy, as the case may be – white, yellow, even black ones caught from darkest Africa, whatever the most selective of gentlemen might desire. I find all men are alike in the dark, in the night; in my beds and with my whores, they bury themselves between spread legs and empty their secrets... So you see, I have friends everywhere who are only happy to do me any favour should I ask, if only to prevent their wives or more importantly, the general public, from discovering their more private habits.'

Silva's voice cooed, slick as hair grease, as he moved closer to the bed, reaching out to touch Bond's stubbled sandy jaw. 

Bond closed his eyes and dreamed of ripping out this yellow-bellied dogfucker's throat with his bare teeth. 

'Ah, don't close your eyes, Mr. Bond, they are your greatest charm, if I may say so. Otherwise I am afraid I would have little use for a child with a face like your own. You are not what one would call a great beauty. I see you have not taken your chance to debauch the lovely little Quinto here, a great shame for I think you would have enjoyed him. Never mind, I will sell his virginity again to the highest bidder. Perhaps for a little more this time, si?'

He reached for Q, who flinched. Before Bond could move, a shadow flung itself at Silva. 

+

Severine, her hair hanging in rat-tails and her eyes wild, tore Silva away from the bed, sobbing. 

'Please, please, Master, do not hurt Q! Please, I will do-' He hurled her away so roughly she hit the wall, tearing the lace neckline of her dress so that it fully exposed her creamy breasts. 

'Stay away from me, you imbecile! Puta madre, I should have beaten some sense into you, you yellow half-breed little slut!' 

He was panting, nearly foaming at the mouth with rage, and made to kick her head when a shot rang out. Silva reeled back at the blast; the bullet tore into one cheek and out the other, fountaining blood in its wake. His maddened eyes seeming to swell out of their sockets and he gurgled in the most ghastly manner. There was another shot and another, fired from his mother-of-pearl pistol, embedded in Severine's skull. Her arms, which had tried to protect her head, came crumpling down, her brain matter splattering against the wall.

'NO!' It was an alien wail of agony, ripped from the boy who had not spoken a single word all evening. 'Severine! Severine!' He scrambled blindly to go to her, but Bond held him fast to the bed with one arm. He barely grimaced when a bullet lodged itself just below his collarbone, and decided enough was enough. He shot Silva's hand to a pulp to match his face, still spraying blood like a geyser. He would bleed dry soon, gutted like a pig, Bond thought with a grim satisfaction. 

Silva slid down to where Severine lay, her eyes open and unseeing, his ghoulish mouth full of blood as he tried to speak. Bond ignored his last attempts at communication, which produced only the grotesque fleshy gnashing sounds of a shattered jaw. Silva's eyes rolled dementedly in his exquisite suffering; the boy's heartbroken sobs merged together with the sound of a man drowning in his own blood. 

+

Bond did his best to bind his wound with a strip torn off the sheet, wondering distantly why on earth none of the maids, whores or patrons had come running at the noise. Perhaps this sort of sordid homicide was all too common here, which would hardly be surprising. He wrapped the boy, who lay limp and unresisting, in his overcoat, which swamped him but disguised his nakedness. Bond swung him up into his arms. Christ, the child weighed nothing at all, no wonder he looked so young...

He closed the door on the evil, blood-stained scene, as lightly as if there was still a sleeping child beyond. The house was silent, and the boy – Q, absurd – had quieted his weeping, merely sniffing now and then. Impressive behaviour, even for an urchin, who had only moments ago seen a most distressing display of death and violence. 

Bond was surprised to find himself murmuring foolish nonsense to the shivering boy in his arms as they stole down the staircase. The sort of sentimental rubbish mothers and nurses cooed at babies and small animals. He buried his nose in the nest of damp dark curls, inhaling something that made him clutch the child closer to him, ignoring the sharp stab of pain in his chest. 

'It's all right now. You are safe now, Q. No-one's going to hurt you. I've got you, don't worry,' he murmured, as they made their way onto the street, as shabby and lurid and foul-smelling as it had been only hours ago.

And yet everything had changed in an inexpressibly manner, in so short a span of time. Bond felt as if the ground below teetered beneath his very feet, the starry sky above obscured by the fog and smoke into a mass of heavy grey. Ignoring the curious stares and watchful eyes at the strange picture they made, he hailed a hansom, watching as the ugly filth of the East End melted away into the night. 

The boy was silent and still shaking in his arms, his eyes shut tight, his thoughts a mystery. Bond looked at the pale, cherubic face resting on his shoulder and wanted to do mad, maudlin things. 

'We're going home now, Q,' he whispered into an ear like an ivory shell. The boy gave no indication that he had heard anything at all. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this took longer to write than the others. I wasn't sure what direction to take it, and I was busy as well. To those of you expecting immediate 00Q porn, my apologies. All in good time, I promise. 
> 
> Also, I know very little about guns and violence, so if my action seems off or unrealistic, I'm sorry. I'm making it up as I go along. 
> 
> I feel uneasy about the way Severine was killed, both in canon and in my story. I feel like her character isn't really explored and her depiction is problematic for a variety of reasons... But she's a Bond girl, and unfortunately they get the short shrift. 
> 
> Thanks to my readers, kudos and comments-leavers! I appreciate you all. Thanks for bearing with me :)


	5. Chapter 5

Bond smoked a cigarette as he gazed out his bedroom bay window into the night. He had tipped the cab driver handsomely for his discretion, and carried the boy into his residence, glad he had given his valet the night off – Tanner was a good manservant, but his eyes were sharp. Bond trusted him, but it was best no-one witnessed a bloodied gentleman staggering up the stairs late at night, a child-sized bundle in his arms. 

The boy Q had resisted a bath but eagerly accepted the hot toddy Bond had made up for them, his wary long-lashed eyes beginning to droop. He hadn't said much of anything at all, only emitting animal whimpers of satisfaction, and if Bond didn't know better, hadn't heard him scream at the sight of Severine's brute murder, he'd have thought the boy a mute, or an imbecile. But no. 

He was not dumb, even if he aped it, perhaps thinking to save himself from abuse with his silence. After the boy had again fallen into slumber, like a maiden cursed with sleeping sickness, Bond had gone to the master bath with a candle and gingerly peeled his scabbed shirt from his skin, grunting lowly through the pain. He watched his flickering face in the looking-glass, meeting his hooded, leaden eyes as he dug the bullet from his chest with a knife, the dark blood welling up like a spring at the raw gash. 

+

It was a shallow shot; Bond had dealt with far worse in much less comfortable conditions. He doused it with proof spirit and sewed it up with a kit he kept in the bath for such occasions. As the needle stitched his skin, Bond's thoughts were far away from his body, in the bedroom with the strange boy lost to the world. 

He had never considered himself a pederast, had never leered at the catamites of Gibraltar or the painted boys of Piccadilly; of course he had sampled all fleshly sins including sodomy, buggering both men and women, but it was not an act of which he dreamed like some.

So why on earth was he so drawn to this brat, nothing but a street urchin, a boy-whore? Like a bloody moth to a flame, he had let down his guard, enamoured by a face like an angel – yet surely he had seen faces more beautiful before? Why had he, for one mad moment, despite the boy's eyes bright with fear – why had he hungered like a starving man, to climb atop that slender white body, kiss those protesting lips into silent submission, to carve a space for himself inside him so deeply he would linger there forever, unable to ever be separated...

It was nothing but folly, a nightmarish instant of bestial lunacy, of base desires. That way lay madness, and in a flash Bond saw Vesper's slack body, her staring eyes imprinted on the inside of his eyelids. Her wraith haunted his days and nights, demanding that he would never forget her, nor forgive himself. 

Damn you. Damn you, Bond whispered to himself, shaking his head furiously like a sodden dog. He stripped off his soiled clothes and relieved himself, taking a swig of spirits before donning Indian silk pyjama trousers, leaving his torso bare so his bandage was not interfered with. 

+

Bond prowled into his bedroom, observing the sleeping boy who had appropriated one of his nightshirts and was drowning in the excess fabric, which slipped off one sharp shoulder and pooled around two skinny calves, smooth as a woman's skin. The boy Q – Bond could not quite bring himself to call him merely Q in his mind– was curled into the foetal position, having stolen both Bond's side of the bed and his favourite down pillow, was suckling intently at his thumb, one finger hooked around his nose. It made an absurd and endearing picture that punched the breath out of Bond, and left him at loose ends, his groin throbbing utterly inappropriately. 

He had made a career out of watching people unobtrusively, while remaining unobserved himself, so he was shaken when the boy's eyes opened, his thumb popping out of his mouth, to ask 'What are you looking at?'

Bond was at a loss to answer. It was unnerving how well he could play pretend to be unconscious; he felt vexed at being played with by a clever child. But at least he had spoken at last, and despite himself, Bond was relieved that this supposed little street Arab was not tarnished by speaking that ghastly Cockney doggerel rife in the East End slums. 

Instead, he had an odd voice, like none Bond had ever come across, low and lilting, almost lisping, but not in a grating manner. There was something almost fey about the boy and his unusual accent, something he couldn't quite identify. What a provoking creature he was!

The boy named Q sighed impatiently, turning so his back faced Bond, each knob of his spine starkly defined through the thin shirt. 

'If you are not going to answer, you might as well turn the light off so I may sleep,' he said petulantly. 

+

Bond stared at him, taken aback. He was a demanding, impudent little wretch, no doubt about it. As though he hadn't just been saved from a life of degrading misery and cruelty at the hands of Silva and his unsavoury clientele! 

'So it speaks, after all! I had been beginning to doubt my powers of recall. All right, little ingrate, I see your delicacy hasn't been belted out of you, and I'm glad of it.'

There was no reply, but he didn't doubt for a moment that Q had heard him. If he was a true gentleman, an honourable man, he would have taken another bedroom, or slept on the divan in the room. 

But despite what Mallory called him, Bond knew he was no noble hero. So he cautiously laid beside the boy in his large bed, careful not to jar his shoulder, and blew out the candle, turned down the gas flame of the lamp above. 

He listened to the deep breaths stemming from a shallow, boyish chest, and murmured into the darkness: 

'What on earth am I to do with you?' There was a slight catch in his companion's respiration, then it resumed again, as even and indifferent as before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woot - updating because I have a crazy weekend ahead. This chapter is a little breather for Bond and Q (and us) after the events of the last, and hopefully gives a little bit of an insight into Q's character, although he is still an enigma. But that's going to change soon, I promise. 
> 
> Many thanks for the kudos and comments, y'all make my day, especially as this is my first work posted to AO3. 
> 
> On an entirely unrelated note, I had a drag queen movie night with my friends recently, and I realized how uncannily the trans* character Bernadette from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, played by Terence Stamp, looks like Daniel Craig. Srsly, can't unsee. 
> 
> Normally I like the alpha males in my ships to be all rugged and hyper-masculine in fics, but now I'm kind of hankering for some drag queen Skyfall crack fic. Come on, Silva is already the bitchy drag queen, right?


	6. Chapter 6

Bond cracked open his eyes in the harsh beam of sunlight as Tanner, prompt as ever, drew the heavy curtains open. With a start of blind alarm at the sight of the wild dark head on the pillow opposite and at the feel of narrow bony feet digging into the back of his legs, Bond lurched upright. His chest throbbed as he dragged the bedclothes with him, earning a sleepy moue of dissatisfaction from his bed partner. 

The boy Q, blast it, had his damned nightshirt all rucked up round his coltish legs obscenely, causing the events of the previous night to flood Bond with sickening awareness as he met Tanner's composed gaze, unflappable as ever. He was no stranger to the array of youthful beauties found abed with his master after late nights or longer journeys, but never had Bond taken a boy to bed before; in all the years Tanner had served him, he could think of nothing that had betrayed the least hint of inversion, or any interest in pederasty. 

But above all, Tanner prided himself on his loyalty and discretion, and had plenty of time to school his face from one of uneasy surprise (not at the boy's sex, but at his youth, still a child) into an impassive visage before the commander awoke. 

+

'Tanner,' said Bond abruptly, his voice low and rough as a bear emerging from hibernation. 'I'd like to introduce to you my nephew, Mr. Charles Fraser-Smith,' as smoothly as if the name was not merely the first to drop into his sleep-dulled mind. 

'If it's all the same to you, I prefer to go by Q, Uncle James, as my dear mother called me,' piped up Q, his high, sweet voice catching on the mention of his fictitious mother, his eyes large and soulful, his plump lower lip trembling; the very picture of an innocent little waif. Bond looked at him, astonished at the boy's skill for artifice – the whelp should be onstage in the West End! He had a talent to rival even Vesper's...

'The pleasure is all mine, master Q,' said Tanner, and Bond would swear that the man's lips quirked into a half-smile at the boy. Really, it was too much, but he was relieved that no comment on the sheer transparency of this story was made, nor a question of why his 'nephew' had not been placed in one of the guest chambers.

'Now, master Bond, would you prefer tea or coffee for breakfast this morning?'

Bond waved him away. 'Just coffee, toast and the papers today, Tanner,'

'And for young master Q?' Tanner turned to Q, who was again playing the ingenue, with the nightshirt exposing his marble shoulder. 

'I'd like some porridge or perhaps eggs, please,' he said, with a toss of his curls. Bond couldn't believe the cheek of him – the boy acted as though he were a little prince, not a victim threatened by misuse! 

'Right away, sir,' replied Tanner, blinking in a manner that just might have been a wink before he exited the room. As soon as the door closed behind him, Bond turned to Q. 

+

'Greedy little imp you are! I see you've charmed my manservant with no effort at all.'

Q climbed out of the bed in a deliciously haughty manner. 

'Mr Charles Fraser-Smith? How appalling, dearest Uncle James. And to think that everyone says you are one of the cleverest men in London!'

The insolent minx!

'You can't be in possession of the sharpest of wits yourself, to so abuse the man who liberated you from a life of debasement,'

Bond was shocked that he was not actually infuriated at the boy, as no doubt he had every right to be; on the contrary, he was enjoying his sauciness too much. So much for children schooled to be only seen and not heard- Q was certainly well worth the looking at, but his mouth...! Bond had never heard the like, certainly not from the many endangered damsels he had rescued in his time. 

The boy had meanwhile wandered off into the bath, likely to relieve himself in the water-closet. Bond heard the water running and got off his stunned arse, telling himself it was his duty to keep an eye on the boy, if only to ensure he didn't drown while he was at it. 

Bond had had a large bathtub installed with a shower grate in the ceiling overhead, often basking in the hot water either alone or with agreeable company, after a mission or a night out. He longed to soak his wound now, to drift in a pool of warmth, and let all unpleasant memories wash away.

He was jolted in the gut by the sight of Q stretching his arms above his head to remove the nightshirt – his shirt, which would now smell of Q – revealing the vulnerable arch of his spine, the slender grace of his neck, the tender bulbs of his bollocks peeking from between slim white thighs. He caught sight of Bond watching in the mirror, but didn't falter self-consciously, seemingly unafraid of the raw hunger in the man's eyes. 

'I'm taking you up on your offer of a wash last night,' Q said in a careless manner, but his body hyper-aware of Bond's presence. 'I must say it's not often I enjoy the luxury of my own bath,' He dipped the long toes of one foot into the water, testing the temperature, then suddenly slipping, losing his balance over the rim of the tub. Bond caught him on the arm and righted him, his hand biting into the soft flesh beneath, leaving behind finger-marks on the milky skin. 

They stood for a moment in silence, the boy clutching at Bond as water splashed to the marble floor. He swallowed and extracted himself from Bond's grip, sliding into the water with a hissing sigh, his eyes sweeping shut in pleasure. Bond longed to strip off his pyjama pants and join him, to wind himself around the flat pale planes of his alluring adolescent body, gliding against him skin to skin. He wanted to wash the knobs of Q's knees poking above the waterline, to hold the fat pink thumb of his boy-prick in his hand and marvel over its small sleekness as it swelled...

Bond forced himself to look away, clearing his throat gruffly. 

'Would you like to use the modesty cover?' he asked, gesturing to the wooden shield that lay against the bath, unused but splattered with water. 

Q snorted, looking at him with those wise, mocking green eyes. 

'It doesn't look like it's ever been used before; it'd be like swimming in a coffin. In any case, it's a bit late to fret about my modesty, don't you think Uncle James?'

Bond concurred, but he felt restless, impotent with his lust for this maddening boy, who made him want to yank him out of the bath and bend him over his lap, spanking those ripe boyish buttocks until they were reddened with the print of his palm, and Q cried out for mercy. 

+

He strode back into the bedroom, both glad and distressed that he was not as engorged as he would be had he been any younger. Tanner entered with a large tray of food, black coffee and buttered toast for Bond, and a cornucopia of delights for Q; fresh fruit, scones with lemon curd, creamed porridge, eggs on toast and spiced tea with foamed milk flavoured with vanilla pod shavings. 

'Tanner my man, you must refrain from spoiling my nephew so, he is cosseted enough by his mamma,' Bond complained, feigning disgust. Tanner bowed, his eyes glistering with humour. 

'As you wish, sir,' said Tanner before taking his leave.

Bond regarded the difference between the two repasts wryly, taking a deep swig of bitter coffee as if to wipe his mind of the image of the beautiful boy in his bath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this chapter took longer than the others, but I had a hellish weekend. Bond is pretty much off his game in this fic, introspective, unstable and obsessive, if not quite dark!Bond. Q is a snarky brat who is pretty and knows it. So much UST. Tanner is a boss. 
> 
> If you are curious about how I picture Q in this fic, there are two fanarts floating around tumblr (I can't recall who the artist is but please let me know if the images sound familiar):
> 
> Both are black-and-white, one with kid!Q looking over his shoulder like a wary coquette without his glasses, wearing adorable shorts, knee-socks and a short-sleeved shirt. The other pictures kid!Q and younger!Bond sitting next to each other, Q dressed as above, clutching Bond's navy hat in his arms, while a navy-uniform garbed Bond looks at him fondly. 
> 
> It's not a Victorian AU, but it's stunning artwork and captures the kind of dynamic I visualise for this fic, illustrating Q's mix of vulnerability and eroticism. 
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos, comments and bookmarks! I love all my readers, and hope you continue to enjoy.
> 
> EDIT: The lovely violetsarentred found the fanart I was talking about here: http://milo36.tumblr.com/post/36744101045/long-time-ago


	7. Chapter 7

'Bond,' said Mallory, 'I must speak frankly with you on this matter. You are acting quite unlike yourself, like some enamored young fool in the first throes of love, and with a boy-whore with only letter for a name, of all people, a child you were meant to save!'

A muscle in Bond's jaw twitched, his eyes as sharp and steely as a snake. My god, how he wanted to give the self-righteous fool a good thumping. 

'And save him I did, as you seem to have forgotten,' he said coldly, his gaze involuntarily tracking to the boy who sat just outside the door, his sulky expression visible through the glass. 

+

He had taken Q to buy some decent clothes that morning after his bath and breakfast. The boy's eyes had been puffy with privately shed tears, and Bond had been unsure what to do or say to him. He was not skilled in comforting those immersed in grief, or any emotion really, so he said nothing and neither did Q. 

Of course he was upset; violent, bloody deaths were a daily occurrence in Bond's life, often ones caused by his own hand, but whatever distressing or corrupt practices the boy had been exposed to, they likely did not include double homicides. 

Bond by nature was a predator, not a tender loving nurturer; taking life, not nursing it, but he wanted more than anything to let Q know he was safe in his hands, although by no means was he to know the depth or true nature of Bond's attachment. 

He had taken him to his favourite bespoke tailor, Savile Row's finest haberdashery and bought the boy four knickerbocker suits in black, slate blue, charcoal grey and chocolate brown, two waistcoats with braid trim, small clothes, a forest green winter wool coat and a sailor hat, against which Q protested most heartily. 

'I am not a child lately breeched! I look like an infant in this sailor suit,' he said, eyes snapping at Bond's visible amusement. 

He had been unable to resisted teasing Q when he had dressed in Bond's oldest, smallest cast-offs that morning, entirely swamped in excess material and looking like a cherubic clown. 

'Oh? And how does my little nephew feel about lace-trimmed velvet Little Lord Fauntleroy suits? You are already in possession of the long ringlets. I'm sure Mr Ford would quickly make one up for you now he has your measurements, hmm?' 

Q's face was priceless in its look of utter horror. 

'To think I took you to be a man of honour! Surely no male would subject another to such an unmanning monstrosity,' 

The boy looked at him beseechingly, and Bond wanted to gather him up in his arms and do such unspeakable things. He gave a pained bark of laughter, and was unable to restrain himself from tousling Q's lush crow's nest of curls, to his squawking indignation. 

Old Mr Ford looked on with mild, assessing eyes. Nephew, indeed! But Commander Bond was his best customer, and such matters were no man's business but his own. 

+

'Bond! You might at least affect to listen to me. I am beginning to be very anxious about your state of mind, and I say this not as a supervisor, but as a friend. We have known each other many years, and I confess I have never seen you act so unlike yourself, except of course for that matter with Miss Lynde...'

'This has nothing to do with Vesper,' said Bond sharply, aching to leave absurd M and his beastly rooms at Boodles, taking Q with him far away from the nuisance and dangers of London. 

'Of course, apart from the fact you have once again lost all sense of reason, blinded by sentiment for a fair face with a tragic past, and rather than a French actress of eighteen, you are besotted with a boy like the very men you were sent to destroy. Should this ever be made public, the scandal will ruin you and stain the reputation of the entire secret service. The Silva operation was a fiasco, Bond – the sloppy job of an amateur or a lunatic, not a seasoned professional! My god man, what on earth were you thinking?'

Bond bristled under Mallory's admonishments. It had not been a clean job, nor was his proudest moment, but Silva was annihilated and he had done his duty. In truth, the night was a drunken, nightmarish blur of bloodied walls and blinding beauty – for the past day and night, he had lived and dreamed of Q, his proud mouth and splayed legs haunting his thoughts. 

His obsession with the boy was burning brightly in such a short time, and it would end only when he possessed the boy, body and soul, marking him as his own. 

+

M sighed at his obstinate silence. 

'I see you are going to act the child here. Would you care to divulge your plans for him? I hardly need to tell you how inappropriate, how unhealthy it is to take such an interest in him – the boy belongs in an orphanage or a reformatory with others of his own kind,'

'Not if I have anything to do with it.' Bond's face had taken on the stubborn aspect of a bulldog, and Mallory knew it was no use continuing to argue with him on the matter. 

'Bond, after this final word I shall say no more on the subject, and against my better inclination, I will let you do as you will. Please tell me he will not be your... kept boy. You understand I could not allow it to be known that my best agent possessed a catamite. Nor do I feel it proper for you to assume a paternal role towards the child, abused and abandoned as he no doubt was. Your occupation requires you to travel to godforsaken regions and endanger your life repeatedly for the good of your country, and who should look after him and provide for him during your many absences, or in the event of your death?'

'I shall arrange for him to be well-cared for, as if he were my own kin. You know as well as I that I have no family to whom to bequeath my wealth when I die. I understand your alarm and cynicism on my behalf, Mallory, but you must trust that I will neither exploit the boy or endanger my obligation to the crown. Above all, understand that I have no wish to part from Q, and will do everything in my power to protect him.'

Bond was surprised by his own animal fierceness towards the boy, who sat impatiently swinging his feet, his sharp green eyes darting around as though he could follow their conversation even in another room. 

'Perhaps you might consider sending him to school, Eton or Harrow or even Ampleforth?' asked M, hopefully in a last-ditch effort at rationality. 

'Mallory, don't waste your breath. I plan to take Q to Skyfall, so I trust my next mission will give me time enough to settle him there.'

M looked as though he had more to say, his keen blue eyes widening at the mention of Bond's neglected Scottish family seat, but he only sighed and stood, shaking Bond's hand wearily. 

'My wise predecessor once said it was an exercise in futility to keep you from a course you had set your mind to, and I can only concur.'

'Clever man,' said Bond with a wolfish grin, already turning his predatory eye to the boy in the next room whose presence called to him powerfully.

+

He swooped down on impulse and caught Q up onto his back, where he clutched at his broad shoulders with a shriek. Bond's chest injury smarted, but he was lost in the feel of boy's warm body pressed against his back, the thin arms wound around his neck and knobby knees clamped at his waist, and he grinned in response to the dumbstruck stares from all the dull, plump mustached gentlemen taking tea in the library. 

They escaped to the street, shaking with laughter; Bond thought that Q's giggles where the most delightful sound he had ever heard. He let him down regretfully with a grunt, tucking the boy's gloved hand into his elbow. He would take him to dine at a tearoom, or to get ices at the park – he was transfixed at the thought of the boy's little pink tongue lapping up the frozen treat, to see a play at a theatre quite unlike Mr Parrot's, or perhaps to sample the pleasures of a toy store, unless the boy thought himself above such childish trifles...

'So, Uncle James, I am to be your little boy then, or to be your catamite?' asked Q wickedly. Bond's grasp stiffened, and his gaze slid uneasily over the passersby, hoping none had heard the words of the little monster, determined to make his life a misery and put Bond in the most frightful peril...

Sodomy laws were nothing to be scorned, at least in the eyes of the prudish public. 

'Shut up, you little demon, or no treats for you,' hissed Bond, not altogether as harshly as he should have. He was too damnably fond of the boy already. 

'I'm ever so sorry, Uncle James,' said Q sweetly, and Bond knew he was entirely lost under the spell of his boy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh man, what can I say. Mallory is a cock-blocker. Bond is going to have some major blue balls by the time I'm done with this. 
> 
> If only my tutor knew I was using her Victorian history class to write underage erotic fanfiction. 
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos and comments, they make me feel loved, and like I'm not the only one with questionable kinks. I also forgot to thank the commentators who reminded me of Daniel Craig's pre-20th century period roles - I imagine Bond in this fic as looking like a deviant Lord Asriel. In which case Q can be Will?
> 
> Also, in case you didn't see this in the previous chapter, the lovely violetsarentred found the fanart I was talking about here: http://milo36.tumblr.com/post/36744101045/long-time-ago. Check out the gloriousness.


	8. Chapter 8

Bond watched Q observe the water-logged scenery that dashed past the window of their private compartment. The boy's eyes had widened significantly when he first set foot into the first class railway carriage, taking in the lush dark blue velvet upholstery with the attached sleeping compartment which featured two green and gold plaid berths, and an ensuite water-closet and basin. The dining car was only a few doors down, with a new observation deck for those who wished to brave the elements of a British November as they crossed the border into what Bond self-deprecatingly called the 'northern wastes'. 

By the nature of his profession, he identified as British first and foremost, but he was a Scot by birth, and had a number of powerful memories associated with his homeland, and with Skyfall, not all of which were happy by any means. 

+

He had sent a wire to Kincaide and his mistress, whom Bond would only ever call Mawdsley; no matter how many years since she had escaped London and married, annihilating his M forever in the eyes of their enemies. Mawdsley had been so successful as the Head of intelligence precisely because she was the very picture of a Grande Dame, the sort of terrifying matriarch who populated Wildean stage farces and played matchmaker to debutantes each Season, never a woman who would ever be suspected of having the remotest interest in the secret state bureaus. 

But her ruse had been exposed and her life endangered by a former agent of hers, a man whom the new proponents of psycho-analysis would have had much to say about his latent neurotic hysteria and unresolved infantile urges towards aloof maternal figures...

It was only when M had almost died in his arms that Bond realised Vesper's death was not the only one that would prove to be his undoing. Despite himself, he had a strange sort of attachment, born out of potent mixture of respect and vexation he felt towards her, like the worst sort of prodigal son. 

She had survived like the iron-willed lady she was, and was secreted away to his remote Scotch retreat, where M had assumed the guise of a lace-capped matron and mate to whiskered old retainer Kincaide; while sometimes Bond wondered if Mawdsley, or rather 'Mrs. Kincaide,' felt as if she'd very much come down in the world, but she betrayed no dissatisfaction to him. They were neither of them given to displays of despair, and all things being equal, she was lucky to be alive.

He thought what she might say about the boy, but decided not to dwell on events which would come to pass soon enough. 

+

The boy... Q had seemed subdued as the hours passed, and grey-skied and green-meadowed England rolled past their window. First he had been reading cheap yellowbacks, Boy's Own Paper and lurid penny dreadfuls which Bond purchased for him at the WH Smith & Sons newsstand, along with the day's papers, but Q long since lost interest in this reading material, and stared listlessly outside. 

Bond wanted to wrest the boy from the thoughts which were evidently causing his black mood, but he felt wrong-footed somehow, undecided of what he should say. 

The child was still such a mystery to him, his expressions oscillating from cheeky to pensive in the blink of an eye; that he was clever was very clear, but most frighteningly, he seemed to be ambivalently aware of his hold over his protector. Bond almost thought he knew how uncomfortable silence made him, and drew it out unnaturally just to vex him. 

How was it they sat side by side, had seen each other bathe, and bloodied, Bond having desperately bartered for ownership of the boy – how could they sit so close, and yet an abyss seemed to yawn between them, the distance insurmountable?

What do you think of me, he wanted to ask; impulsively, madly, as if he were the child, not Q. Absurd and impossible. Nobody ever dared ask what do you think of me, what do you want from me, who was not afraid of the answers they might receive. 

So both held their peace for a while longer, until it was time for supper, which they took with the other first-class passengers in the dining car, the curtains drawn against the encroaching darkness beyond the glass. Each table had a fresh posy in a vase and flickering candles, despite the gas lights installed in sconces round the room, casting long shadows across Q's face from his feathery lashes. 

+

He ate his meat pie, bread, butter and boiled egg all daintily, like a little bird whose gullet is too narrow to swallow things whole. Bond watched, rapt, as the boy's tongue flicked out at the traces of treacle pudding on his spoon, licking like a coquettish kitten. He was swollen in his trousers and hadn't eaten anything at all, his stomach unsettled by the unnerving silence, his indecent reaction to innocent actions. 

Bloody maddening boy! Yet safe in his head Bond thought, I adore you, and was both amused and nauseated by himself, by the absurd sentiments he was somehow capable of. 

Through it all, Q sat detached, waiting and watching from beneath half-closed lids. He was tired of this extended foolishness, the tension, the impotent foreplay they indulged in together. He may have been only fourteen, but Q was well-versed in the game of temptation, like anyone who had ever lived in a brothel. He was growing bored with Bond's wavering, with his pretense of honourable intentions which grew hollower by the hour. 

Things are not so complicated, he wanted to tell him. You are a man, and I am a boy. You are my guardian, I am your ward. I was a whore, but I am a virgin. I am yours; I would deny you nothing.

But some things are not said in the dining cars of first-class carriages, so he ate, and Bond watched, and nothing of importance was conveyed between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for continuing to bear with me - evidently I should add slow-burn to my tags. 
> 
> There are some things in this chapter that are fudged or implausible, like their compartment, which even for first-class was pretty excessive. Only Queen Vicky really got the pimped out railway ride. 
> 
> M's alive in this fic, because I adore her, although having her survive is about as realistic as having a female as the head of the secret service in the Victorian period, which didn't even exist until 1909. 
> 
> Speaking of anachronisms, there are some allusions to psychoanalysis, but Freud's theories didn't really come into play until the Edwardian period or the early 20th c, although his first work on hysteria was published in 1895, which is a little closer to the time period of this fic.
> 
> And this was not meant to turn into a history lecture, I swear. Thanks for reading :)


	9. Chapter 9

Neither slept easily that night, as the train sped towards Edinburgh. The train compartment was extravagantly spacious for what it was, but still there did not seem to be enough space of them both to breathe and move about, the slenderness of Q's body seeming all angles and sharp bones. 

Bond made no pretense of looking away from Q as he changed, and he knew the boy's eyes had flickered, curious, over the muscle-bound planes and slabs of his back, examined the pink puckers and pits of his scars. 

'Battle wounds,' he'd drawl to women, with a rakish grin, but it was an empty truth. His body was brutal but unbroken, and held all that he was, bound up inside of scored skin. 

+

Bond lounged on his plaid berth, arms crossed behind his head, eyes halt-slitted like an indolently dangerous big cat which was considering pouncing at the delectable morsel dangling just out of reach. Q's movements were slightly awkward in his self-consciousness, a delightful flush spreading from his temples to his achingly thin torso before he pulled on his new nightshirt, sadly less transparent and oversized than the one Bond had loaned him. 

The boy crawled into his own bed opposite, dragging the bedcovers up so that all could be seen was a mop of dark curls peeking out. The curtains were drawn against the windows, creating a nest of warmth and darkness as the train tracks hummed along below; although it was not the late hour to which Bond was accustomed to retiring, he turned off the lights, plunging the compartment into blackness. 

'Goodnight, Q,' he said, tersely. 

'G'night,' was the soft response. 

Silence pervaded the cabin until Q began to toss and turn restlessly, wriggling about like a little fish and making an awful racket about it. Bond grit his teeth and tried to ignore him, but to no avail. 

+

'Q, will you stop thrashing about like a fish on a damn hook?' 

'Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry for disturbing your rest, Uncle James, but as I'm about to be deposited in the middle of the Scottish wilderness amongst complete strangers, so please forgive me if I'm unable to sleep!' Q's voice rose to the edge of hysteria. 

Bond was silent for a moment. It hadn't even occurred to him that Q might be anxious about what was going to happen to him, about where he was going to be taken. So many changes had happened so quickly in the past few days that it must be overwhelming on a child, and he might feel as if he were being forsaken, an unwanted burden... To think he had been so worried about M's reaction, and Kincaide's uncertain welcome, he hadn't considered Q's own thoughts on the matter. 

'I didn't mean to cause you distress, Q. Nor is it my intention to abandon you in the Scottish wilderness, as you so eloquently put it, I assure you my old homestead is not inhabited by barbarians. You must know I have no wish to part from you so soon, but it is the nature of my occupation to depart England's shores abruptly, with an uncertain return. I have a duty to provide for you, but before that I have one to my Queen and country, do you understand?'

Q was quiet, before asking petulantly, 'But mayn't I come along? I'm ever so clever and a quick learner, I'm sure I could assist you on your undertakings abroad,' 

Bond laughed, touched by the boy's earnestness in spite of himself. 

'Would that I could, but my assignments are much too dangerous for a child-'

'I am no child!' interrupted Q heatedly. 

'Your very protest suggests otherwise. No, Q. I insist you remain here where you'll be safe and cared for by those whom I trust with my life. In any case, you have much catching up to do in terms of education,'

'I've never had any need for schooling, I'm quick-witted enough,' said Q, with all the arrogance of a precocious child. 

'I'm sure you are, but any ward of mine is going to have the finest formal education available, the classics, French, mathematics... I'll send for a reputable tutor, as I'll not subject you to the horrors of boarding schools.'

Bond's own time at Eton was trying, not because of being bullied, his build and fists protecting him from persecution, but rather his youthful rebelliousness, which paid no heed to authority of any kind, and then there was his randiness, which like the former, had altered little over time. 

+

Q had been quiet for a good while, and Bond turned over, assuming the little rascal had finally fallen asleep. He was half gone himself into the arms of Morpheus before the patterning of footsteps crossing the carpeted floor jerked him back to wakefulness. 

Bond blearily made out the ghostly white of a nightshirt floating before him, and the shine of two large, luminous eyes. He made no movement, as if paralyzed beneath a hypnotist's gaze, jerking away only at the feel of ice-cold feet, long and boney, digging into his legs. 

'Q?' he hissed. The boy's very adult response was to dive below the bedcovers once again, curling up into a deferential ball. 

Bond sighed. 'Oh damn it all... Alright then, come here, you,' with one sweep of his arm he pulled Q closely into the curve of his own body, the boy unresisting, only nestling closer like a newborn animal, his eyes staring owlishly while he worked his thumb in his mouth. 

'Christ, Q, you'll be the death of me,' Bond muttered, belying his words by wrapping his other arm around his ward, stroking the soft fabric tracing over the sharp should-blades, the sleekness of his nape clustered with curls. 

Q made a muffled sound, caught between his teeth and thumb that might have been a whine or whimper, perhaps a purr of satisfaction. Bond was tempted to indulge his baser urges – after all, the boy had invited himself into his bed, surely not unaware of the possible consequences, but of course he fell asleep immediately, having gained his prized spot at Bond's side, learning his heavy head against the knot of the man's shoulder. 

+

Looking down at the boy in his arms, admiring the way his fringe of lashes cast smoky shadows across his angelic face, Bond felt a fierce joy, a love of a kind unparalleled in his life, yet he was also glad of the coming separation. For how much longer would he be content to hold and touch, but not caress or plunder the boy's beauty? Already he had gone so far, and he knew himself to be an impatient man, greedy for every fleshly experience, pain and pleasure. 

But Bond only brooded a short time, before he too surrendered to the call of sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh my god, I am so sorry I took so long to update! Unfortunately, RL issues and November crunch time meant I had to go on a short hiatus from this, but no worries, I'm not abandoning it. 
> 
> Thanks for being so patient and bearing with me - I hope you continue to enjoy (despite the fact that this chapter is still set on the train, I need to move things along faster), and feel free to leave an kudos, comments or concrit. 
> 
> I hope to be on a more regular updating schedule again, either every other day or every few days :)


	10. Chapter 10

+

The train's whistle was deafening as it departed from Edinburgh for further climes, leaving a fair-haired brute of a man, and a dark-curled wisp of a boy in the flurry of its wake. Both were bleary-eyed yet forced their bodies into alertness, Bond inspecting his gold pocket-watch which was an inscribed inheritance from his long-dead father. 

He had wired M and Kincade of his return to Skyfall, saying only that he would not be alone. M would doubtless be able to read between the lines, that whomever he was bringing was involved in a mission of his; although how pleased she would be with a new resident, and a boy-child at that, was a more dubious matter. 

+

'Master Bond!' called a deep Scotch voice that could only belong to one man. Bond turned with a sliver of a smile for the closest man to a father he had ever had, grasping his thick-gloved hands in his own with a hearty shake. 

'Kincade, it's good to see you, old boy,' said Bond. 'I see you haven't changed a jot in the years I've been away,' he observed, teasingly, and for a moment Q got a glimpse of the little rogue Bond must have been long ago. The old gamekeeper was still portly, white-bearded and whiskey-throated, a fighter to the last with his trusted Charles Parker shotgun always at his side. 

'Aye, ye know I do my best to keep it that way. Now then, who's this wee laddie?' 

Kincade looked to Q like a cross-breed between St. Nicholas and a bear. He heartily objected to being called both 'wee' and 'laddie', and nodded stiffly to the man, as haughty as a little prince. 

'This is Charles Fraser-Smith, who for some absurd reason prefers to be called Q. He is my ward, and shall be staying for some time at Skyfall, as I have other duties to attend to elsewhere and can't allow him to accompany me. Q, this is Kincade, Skyfall's own relic of a retainer,'

'Relic, eh? Why, I remember when Master Jamie here was just a wee one no bigger than this sapling here, and the unholy terror of the whole shire. He almost burnt the village kirk down more than once...'

'Somehow I'm not at all surprised,' said Q frostily, earning him a bark of laughter from Kincade, and a tousled head of ink-black curls from Bond before he pulled away, scowling.

Kincade sighed and looked at the greying sky.  
'We'd better be going before the storm comes, and the one Emmy'll be brewing if I don't get you both home in time enough!'

He led them to the carriage, old and modest, wheels splattered from the country roads, and horses pawing the ground and snorting nervously. Q and his bags were set inside, and Bond about to follow when Kincade remarked, uncharacteristically quiet:

'Not much of a talker, that one. But almost too bonny for a boy, aye?' Bond stiffened at his words. What was Kincade thinking, or implying? He was good with his fists and quick with his gun, and more than sharp-witted for a man his age. But no matter, for Bond was the master; and he would not hesitate to remind anyone of that, no matter his fondness for them, should he be questioned on the matter of Q.

He looked at Kincade with wintry eyes, and said simply, 'Yes, he is, isn't he?' and climbed into the carriage, the door closed behind him. 

+

The carriage was dark, despite the furs and smouldering coal warmers, both the occupants silent and shadowed as the carriage jolted along, looking out the windows to the stark landscape of peat and heather hills beyond. 

'Are you hungry?' asked Bond, and the boy shrugged. 

'I'm not quite starved yet, but I'll be sure to inform you when I am.'

Bond cracked a smile. 'You're quite the cheeky little monkey, aren't you? I'd almost pity the ones whom I'm leaving you to, if I wasn't entirely certain they could manage you.'

Q gave a delicate snort. 'Really, if we are falling to the level of simian metaphors, I hardly think I'm the most ape-like one here. In any case, what makes you so certain they can manage me?'

He sounded almost insufferably confident in his own cleverness, yet there was a vulnerability in his bright green eyes that was both alluring and endearing. Bond felt again the gulf stretching between them as they sat on opposite sides of the carriage, felt an undeniable need, a hunger to know this boy, the intricate secrets of his spiky mind and slender body. 

'Q,' he asked, soft as a whisper, 'Who are you, really?'

He turned round sharply at this question and stared at Bond for a beat. 

'You think there is nothing more you'd like to know than who I truly am, but I doubt you'd be so enamoured with my history. Whatever past you've concocted for me in your mind is much more romantic or tragic than my reality, I assure you. As Q I can be anybody I choose, any one you desire... Do you understand?'

Bond nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He wanted to launch himself across the carriage and shake the boy, spank him, kiss him, until he revealed himself to him...

'Besides, I don't think I believe in there being a 'real' you or me, behind our masks. Are you truly Commander Bond, or Master Jamie, or Uncle James, or John Lennox? You are one of them, or all of them, as you choose at any moment, you see?'

With that, the boy turned to the window once more, now lashed with rain. Poor Kincade was doubtless getting drenched driving, but they were near now – Bond could just make out the gates of Skyfall through the mist and rain. He felt his heart give a shudder at the sight, so rife in wounds he had no wish to open again. He hadn't been home since Vesper, since M...

+

As they drew up the drive, Q thought that the manor looked desperately old and forbidding, like something out of the Gothic novels he enjoyed. No doubt it had once been a very grand estate; Bond was probably a lapsed laird by the looks of it, leaving his ancient homestead to decay in his absence.

Kincade helped Q out – who accepted his aid with bad grace – smelling of wet wool but somehow jovial despite the bitter cold and sopping coat. Q shivered and huddled near the vast entrance doors, a city boy uneasy at the thought of being surrounded by nothing but miles of moor and sheep, the nearest village nearly an hour's drive away in bad weather. How could Bond abandon him in such a desolate place? Perhaps he could be otherwise persuaded... Q was more than willing to use every tool at his disposal to get what he wanted, and this would be no different.

+

The door creaked open behind him, and Q gave a start. In the doorway stood a woman of steely majesty rivaled only by the Queen herself. She was, from her age and attire, Kincade's wife and housekeeper of Skyfall, but Q had a feeling that she was more master of the place and all within it than Bond himself. Despite her lace cap, fringed shawl and silver curls, she was more dragon than lamb, and Q swallowed convulsively at the mere sight of her. 

'Have you never been told it's impolite to stare, boy?' she asked sharply. Her voice was elegant but razor-edged, suggestive of the best class of ladies in London, a far cry from her husband's.

'B-begging your pardon, ma'am.' He stammered as he hadn't in years, and suddenly wished for Bond to hurry and join them.

She sniffed. 'You might as well come in then, for there is no use in all of us chilled to the marrow,' She led him into a hall rich with wallhanging and dark wood, glazed looking-glasses and stuffed animal heads with uncanny glass eyes.

The parlour was little different in décor, but there was a roaring fire beyond the grate, in front of which he settled gratefully. 

'Q!' called Bond, having helped Kincade to stable the horses and carry in their luggage. 

He made his way to the parlour but stopped abruptly at the sight of M, while Q looked on curiously. M looked much the same, and yet he barely recognised her in the dress of a housekeeper; but when she met his gaze with her own hard grey stare, he knew she had not changed. Neither spoke, only looking intently at each other until Kincade entered like a blustering gale. 

'Emmy, me dearest!' he cried, twirling her about and giving her a smack on her plump cheek. She did not look embarrassed at this affectionate display, only a trifle amused at the reaction of her former protege and the boy he had brought with him. Both were studiously looking elsewhere, with uncomfortable, pained expressions, escaping even Bond's stoic facade. 

'Before we all get carried away, may I suggest a lunch is in order?' said M, with a wry smile, like a cat with a mouse in its paws.  
'As I recall, you have the finest of ideas, Ma'am,' said Bond, leaning low over her small but strong hand, as she looked on with sardonic amusement. Bond was always at his best while playing at a gentleman. 

Q noted how Bond's 'Ma'am' had sounded peculiarly like 'Mum'. 

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What can I say, despite best intentions... late update is late. My apologies. The next few weeks are crazy for me as it's the end of term, but I hope to have at least semi-regular updates because I want to be finish this fic before the new year...
> 
> Many thanks for the kind comments and kudos, I appreciate each and every one! Thanks for keeping with me, all of you. 
> 
> As for Kincade's mangled accent, although I've lived in Scotland for the past few years, I still find it near impossible to write in Scottish brogue, but I attempted nonetheless!


	11. Chapter 11

Q woke with a jolt in a bed so big it seemed to have been built for someone of colossal stature, which he, to say the least, was not. The chamber itself also looked fit for a giant – impressively enormous, with high, thick-paned casement windows and huge dark furnishings. The wall were draped with old tapestries portraying unpleasant scenes – a man being beheaded with a blade; hounds ripping into a stag; a garden haunted by hellish creatures: Sphinxes, winged apes, Eve extending a luscious apple. 

'How very appropriate for a child,' muttered Q to himself. The room looked as if it hadn't been inhabited in decades, if ever. He had been dropping with fatigue during supper – which Mr and Mrs Kincade had shared at the dining room table, not like proper domestics at all. 

+

Kincade had caught him before he pitched head-first into his stew, lifting him with barely a grunt. 

'Em, love, this wee lad needs some meat on his bones...he's light as a feather!'

M merely sniffed. 

'Not for long, if I have anything to do with it. Put the child in the Forest bedroom, I made it up this afternoon.'

'Aye, it's time master Jamie's old room was used...'

Kincade trudged away, the boy's head lolling on his shoulder in sleep. James watched them go, restraining himself from going after and taking the boy from Kincade's arms, carrying Q to bed himself...

+

He found himself being watched by M with her sharp, hawklike eyes, seemingly black pools in the shadows. 

'Well, James, I can't say I'm much surprised with your newest acquisition; you always did enjoy playing the white knight, and I must say that your little margery is very fetching indeed, although to bring him to Skyfall... the home of your parents. He must really have touched your heart of stone like only one other...'

'M,' Bond's voice was sharp, a warning. 'Enough. He is my responsibility, my business. You may be mistress of Skyfall while I am abroad, but it is not for you to question me. As you have so astutely guessed, he was a margery, a boy-whore, one of Silva's most expensive virgins who I purchased for a night. I expect you've heard the story from Mallory. Both his owner and his protector, a girl named Severine, are dead. He is now my ward, and Skyfall shall be his home.'

'I see. Entirely a matter of duty, I suppose. Honour and other such nonsense, nothing at all to do with sentiment, or anything untoward for a lovely untouched youth, of course.'

Bond grit his teeth. She was mocking him, like a stout crow, cawing at his weaknesses, his transparency. 

'I resent your insinuations about my intentions toward Q, when I have brought him here to remove him from the dangers of my presence.'

'James, I'm much too old to worry about propriety and causing offense. Don't let's be foolish and quarrel over society's narrow notion of morality. The boy will be safe and well-cared for in this house, although he may be lonesome without other children about, but we'll soon fatten him up and get roses in his cheeks, and he'll be a different child entirely when you next visit.'

'I hope you don't intend to fatten him for the slaughterhouse,' said Bond wryly, at peace with M once again. 

'I'm afraid, James, I make no promises I cannot keep, and although Kincade and I have thus far avoided a fall into cannibalism, one never knows what the future may hold...'

+

The wind wailed around the edge of the house, and Q shivered in his thin nightshirt, despite the many bedclothes blanketing the bed; the fire had sputtered out long ago. Despite himself, he missed the wall of heat emanating from a man's body by his side. Wrapping a black-fringed shawl about his shoulders, he got up from the bed, drawing a velvet curtain away from the window. Through the stark moonlight Q saw only a vast expanse of the bleak moors beyond, drab and ashen, devoid of trees, and appearing to stretch out in all directions endlessly. 

'So this is what purgatory looks like,' he whispered to himself. Q had only the vaguest idea of heaven, hell and purgatory from the zealous inner-city missionaries who canvassed the East End, looking for souls to save, dropping pamphlets in their wake like others dropped tobacco ashes and gin bottles on the sludge-slick streets. 

Grimacing at the memory, he let the curtain fall back, plunging the room back into darkness. Q reached out his hands in front of him, feeling his way around the room until his eyes readjusted to the blackness, reaching a heavy carved wooden door, which opened not into a corridor as he had expected, but rather what appeared to be nursery, as bleak and grand as the room he'd left, ragged tapestries fluttering on an eerie gust of air. The groan of the wind was otherworldly, a wretched sound; Q blindly put his hands over his ears before stumbling over a small, square table and falling to the floor. 

'Damn! Bugger! Blast!' he hissed hysterically, holding his smarting leg to his torso, rocking in pain against the rough weave of the carpet. 

+

Overcome with anger and exhaustion, Q burst into tears, weeping like he hadn't allowed himself in years. Slowly his cries abated to snuffles, just moments before Bond burst into the room in an open dressing-gown, his pale eyes wild – for a moment of madness, Q thought Bond's eyes the colour of the moonlight on the moor...

'Q? What's wrong? I heard you crying...' Bond's voice was so urgent it made Q want to giggle, but instead he sat up, embarrassed of his tear-streaked face. 

'I'm fine. I just woke up and hurt myself like a fool,' Q said stiffly, his voice still muffled with tears.  
'My apologies for disturbing your sleep.'

Bond snorted, calmed instantly.

'No wonder you injured yourself, walking about in the dark like a madman. No candle, the fire gutted...'

He put his hand on the boy's shoulder, guiding him back to the bedroom with the strange memory of the same chamber, once so long ago, having been his own in boyhood.

'Christ, Q! You're cold as ice! Get back into bed, this instant.'

Q was only too happy to oblige, owlishly watching Bond light a low fire in the hearth, only his pointed, pale, fine-boned face visible against his inky curls; his large eyes an unusual shade of grey-green in the flickering light. The engraved four-poster bed swathed with forest-green brocade seemed to swallow him up entirely. 

Bond stood abruptly, coming to stand by the bed and fluffing the bedclothes as awkwardly as a new mother. He cleared his throat. 

'I have another sheepskin blanket in the chest, if you'd like it at the foot of your bed, in case you get chilled again...'

'No, thank you. These covers are thick enough.'

'Right. If you're sure then I'll-'

Bond turned to go; Q interrupted him.

'No! Wait, please... I feel too alone... I'm-'

Q tailed off, swallowing with humiliation. Bond drew closer again, reaching out to touch an errant curl against Q's snowy temple. 

'I'll stay, if you like.'

Bond settled himself under the covers beside Q, pulling the boy into his arms, encountering no resistance. Unconsciously, he began to rock him, humming a nameless tune that was less lullaby than half-remembered bawdy song. Q's shudders subside with sleep, his full, berry-bitten lips half-open. Without the slightest hesitation or pang of conscience, Bond covered the boy's mouth with kisses, ardent as a lover. Q only sighed in his slumber.

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry friends and readers! I didn't intend for the hiatus to last quite so long, but it was exams and then the holidays, not to mention a nasty bout of Norovirus...
> 
> But I'm back now with best intentions, and have no plans to abandon ship anytime soon. Not when this fic is the longest thing I've ever written (that alone says everything about me) and with so much unresolved sexual tension...
> 
> Eve's gonna show up in the next chapter. And there will be steampunk inventions - at least's that the plan. And smut, at some point. Soon.
> 
> Thanks for the lovely comments, and for those who haven't abandoned hope - I love you all!


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, all! Have some fluff and porn for your hangovers. But be forewarned, I haven't written smut in aaages, so I don't really know what I'm doing. Which is mostly copying from other slash, much more well written, fics. 
> 
> Did I promise an appearance of Eve and some inventions? Well, I lied. Next chapter, I hope. These things take longer than I expect to write, because I like to describe everything. Purple proser. 
> 
> Many thanks for reading, and do tell me how you thought I did... Your comments and kudos (and bookmarks, I don't forget those) make my day and motivate me, always much appreciated.   
> Enjoy underage homosexual bodice-ripping! And cryptic!Q!

Bond woke with the dawn, his body honed by decades of abrupt awakenings. He looked at the boy-shaped lump in the blankets nestled at his side, Q's breath puffing at the peak of one nipple, reached over and smoothed sleep-mussed curls over a forehead smooth as glass and the elfin shell of an ear. 

Bond was leaving on the first train of the day; there would be little time to say goodbye. For the best, no doubt. No sense in encouraging the boy's attachment to him, hero-worship only ended in disillusionment, as well Bond knew. 

Q stirred, like an animal slowly surfacing after a winter of deep sleep, blinking at him like a little bird. 

'Go back to sleep,' Bond murmured. 'It's early yet, only dawn.' 

Q ignored this, crawling to the side of the bed and lifting one of the bed's canopy panels, flooding their dark, warm nest with pink-dappled sunlight. He grunted and let the curtain fall back into place. 

'Too bloody right,' the boy grumbled, tumbling back to his place as a live coal at Bond's side, but not before he had caught sight of Q's willowy, ivory legs kicking their way back under the covers. 

+

Bond expected he would turn and go back to sleep, but instead the boy peered up at him blearily, propping his serious little face up on an elbow which fetchingly exposed the bones of his shoulder. 

How very lovely you are... And thank God I'm leaving, Bond thought to himself, equally wry and wistful.

'Will you give me a kiss?' asked the little imp, solemnly – not like the teasing coquette he was. 

'What?' sputtered Bond, playing at indignant and obtuse, a part he had grown quite good at these past few days.

'You look at me as though you'd like nothing better than to kiss me. At least apart from the times where you look ready to throttle me, of course,' said Q with a quirk of his lips, baring his throat as if daring Bond to imagine grasping him by the neck and asphyxiating him only a little, only lovingly...

A perverse testament to an unnatural adoration for sylph-like youths with strange cat eyes, thought Bond, vaguely, already bending towards the maddening boy despite himself.

'Don't deny me now; you are not so good an actor as you imagine yourself to be. I'm tired of playing games and being treated like an innocent child. Or have you forgotten where you sprung me from?' he challenged, lifting cool fingertips to stroke the fair bristles at Bond's temple, tracing the spidery network of lines to the edge of his eye. 

Bond blinked, fluttering pale lashes against Q's finger, and for a moment all was silent, resting, considering.

'Not a child, are you? Not a margery, either?' he asked finally, voice hoarse. 

'You know better than I. After all,' – here Q pressed a faint kiss to the stubble of Bond's jaw, 'I am your dream-boy. Q can mean anything at all, at least for one night.'

+

Whatever fragile threads still binding Bond to any fragments of conventional morality, propriety, sanity were rent at that moment, and he launched himself at the boy like nothing so much as a predator eager to feed. Q's wrists were so delicate and thin in his grip, the body trembling with agitation beneath him – Bond feasted on his mouth, drinking deeply; the boy's untrained tongue lashing eagerly at his own, the silken-sweat smell released by his curls...

Bond attacked the slender stem of Q's neck, the sharp wing of his shoulder blade, pulling away his nightshirt so roughly the seams threatened to split. All the while the boy was making sounds as if he was dying, swollen boy-prick tenting his shirt, seeping pre-spend that glistened in the darkness. Bond gave to more time to ripping the garment off, but instead rucked it up to the Q's armpits, only lightly furred like the sparse thicket of curls at his cock, exposing the quivering muscles of his shallow stomach, tense in anticipation.

'You... you look like the wolf, from the German fairy tale...' he gasped, only half in jest. 

Bond bared his teeth in response, swooping down to place a sharp bite on the jut of one hipbone which earned him something of a squeal from Q, who thrashed away like a snake. 

'I would... you haven't the faintest idea... Christ, you look...' Bond murmured to himself, before leaning down to chase the scarlet flush from Q's pretty little rose-brown nipples – he couldn't resist a bite to one, a tweak to the other, pricking them into tight peaks – tonguing down the bones of his ribcage, sweeping across the bowl of his navel, all still enchantingly, disturbingly bereft of dark tufts.

Q writhed and wriggled and moaned like the little virgin Silva had proclaimed him, and remembering this, that he had bought the price of his maidenhead that bloody night not so long ago, only stoked Bond's lust for the boy in his arms, as primal and possessive as the mythic wolf Q had likened him to before he had lost all coherency.

+

Pushing one of those underfed legs over his shoulder to gain better access, Bond understood finally, intimately, that he was not a good man. And taking Q's sweet, molten little prick into his mouth, while the boy in question tossed his head wildly on the pillows, Bond recognised himself without condemnation, and devoted himself to the task at hand, earning a mouthful of boy-seed for his troubles. 

He held Q while he shook and shivered in his arms, his sharp eyes vacant with bliss, legs splayed open around him, mouth still gaping open with a smothered cry.

'Shhhh, shhhh,' Bond soothed, offering meaningless words of endearment, crooning loving nonsense, until the boy lay still and began to return to himself. He ignored the throbbing of his own engorged prick, much as he wanted to force Q's legs open and force himself inside his boyish buttocks, spending so deep he would take root inside him forever. 

'My little love,' he murmured, so lowly he thought he would not be heard. But limp arms draped around his neck and pulled him down to meet Q's mouth in a kiss that was exhausted, appreciative – licking into his mouth like a kitten. 

'What have I brought into my bed? A little wildcat?' asked Bond, grinning down at the boy fondly as he hadn't smiled at anyone for years. 

Q muttered some intelligible and nuzzled his shoulder sleepily. He gave a small purr of satisfaction, nipping Bond when he laughed. 

'I can't stand you,' he said, little quirk of a smile back in place. 

'Too late. Your secret is out now, kitten,' Bond replied, taking his boy's face into his hands and kissing him again, and again.


	13. Chapter 13

Q woke to the sound of dogs howling and yelping. He was alone in his big bed, the covers tucked smoothly around him. 

'James?' He mumbled, sitting up. The room was dark, the curtains drawn and the fire gutted. 'James!' Q called, looking bewildered, eagerness combined with dread. 

Throwing off the bedclothes, he rushed to the window, drawing aside the heavy curtain. In morning light, he saw the black-caped figure of Bond striding through the low-hanging mist across the moor with a pack of hounds which tugged and struggled against their leads.

'Good,' murmured Q, glad that he hadn't left yet. It wasn't too late to convince him to stay, or to take Q with him. He watched as Bond playfully wrestled with the dogs like a boy, for all the dogs looked like growling hell hounds. 

Q quickly dressed himself in one of his knickerbocker suits and bolted out of his room, nearly getting lost in the dim-lit labyrinth of corridors. He could still hear the dogs baying outside like screaming sirens; finally he found the back stairway leading to the back door. 

Bond met him turning the corner of the house. 

'Good morning, Q,' he said, his face unreadable. For a moment Q wondered if he had simply imagined the events of last night in a particularly vivid erotic dream. No, he had the kiss marks and bruises on his skin to prove it. 

The dogs snarled at him and he jumped, skittish as a doe. Q had been familiar with street cats, mangy creatures who stole scraps from stalls and fought like demons, but the street dogs he had always stayed well away from. He'd heard tell of one beast that had half-eaten some poor fellow who'd fallen asleep in the wrong alley one night.

Bond noticed his wariness, and hissed at his dogs, pulling at their leads. 'Down, boys, down. Good dogs.' One whimpered at this show of mastership.

''Morning,' said Q, feeling awkward and wrong-footed. Should he call him Uncle James, for all that it now seemed foolish and quasi-incestuous?

'I – saw you from the window. Walking the dogs,' Q grew redder with each word. What on earth was he spouting this rubbish for? Why the hell didn't James say something, instead of looking at him with that inscrutable face!

But James was silent, evidently waiting for him to go on. 

'I'm – I'm glad to see you haven't left yet. I though you might have,' said Q, hating himself fiercely for admitting it. The corners of Bond's mouth softened a touch.

'Surely you don't think I'm enough of a blackguard to up and leave without a word?' he said, teasingly. 'Not without saying good-bye and stealing a kiss, surely. No man alive could resist such an expression,'

'What expression?' asked Q, tartly. 'The one where I'd like to gag you?'

Bond laughed, freeing one hand to reach and tousle Q's curls. 

'I think it's time for breakfast, pup. Perhaps you won't be so sour with Kincade's famous porridge in your stomach, hmm?' 

Q stuck his tongue out at him. He didn't know why he was compelled to be so cheeky in James's presence, but he couldn't help it. 

+

Kincades' porridge was as delicious as promised, and there was a wealth of other foodstuffs, from potato scones, eggs, sausages and beans to blood pudding and haggis, although Q hadn't been daring enough to try the latter. 

Mrs Kincade watched every morsel he put in his mouth, looking pleased at the amount he'd wolfed down. 

'Thank heavens the child has found an appetite! In no time I'm sure he'll be a great strapping lad...' she said, watching Bond's grimace at the idea with a smirk. 

Kincade wiped his silver mustaches with a handkerchief and patted his plaid-vested gut contentedly. 

'Right, then, Master Jamie, I suggest we'd better be off now so's you don't miss your train to London...'

'Yes, of course, shouldn't want that,' said Bond distractedly, watching Q intently. The boy did his best not to let his face fall, swallowing heavily. They had only just gotten to Skyfall, and then last night... last night had been the start of something he'd been waiting for. And now James was leaving. 

+

They all stood and M began gathering the dishes while Bond and Kincade went to load the luggage in the carriage. Q stood uselessly, frozen on the spot, his eyes luminous with unshed tears. M's hawk eyes missed nothing, but she was not the affectionate, comforting type of matron by nature – rather the opposite – and crying children made her uncomfortable. 

'How – how long shall he be gone?' asked Q, his voice croaking slightly. M was silent, unsure what to say. She didn't want to upset the boy, but Bond could be gone a very long time, perhaps never to return. 

'For good?' Q whispered, throat closing over at the thought. M shook herself, rallying. 

'Nonsense. Only for now, you'll get used to his comings and goings soon enough, I wager,' she said, bustling out of the room. 

Q stood alone for another moment, before furiously scrubbing at his eyes and taking a deep breath. He haltingly went outside the front door, watching Bond help Kincade load the last of his luggage. 

'Right, then, time to be off,' said Kincade, briskly. 'But perhaps you'd better say a word to the lad first.'

+

Bond turned and saw Q standing silently, his arms crossed in front of his thin chest, staring at the ground. He cleared his throat, not the only one finding their parting excruciating. 

'Q? Would you like to come with us to the station?' He asked, voice gruffer than he'd meant. 

Q shook his head, without having lifted his eyes from the ground. Bond sighed, leaning closer. 

'Look, Q, I'm sorry to be leaving like this... So soon, I know it's abrupt... If I could have my way, I'd never leave you, you must understand that. But in my profession, I have a duty to the Crown which requires me to go at inopportune moments.'

'I wish... I wish you'd take me with you,' whispered Q, brokenly. 

Bond looked at him and saw a little boy who was being abandoned, again, and it felt as though his heart was breaking. Funny to think only weeks ago, he'd been proud to proclaim himself heartless, immune to the snares of love. 

'You know I can't. It's far too dangerous, or else I would. One day I will take you with me, Q, to see the world, Egypt, India, Venice, Paris... Anywhere you'd like. But not now.'

He clasped the boy's fine-boned hand in his own. 'Can you wait for me to come back for you?' 

Q had a sense he was not only asking about traveling, but something else, much more significant. He couldn't speak, but only nodded. 

Bond drew him close, pressing their foreheads together; although Q wished he would kiss his mouth before he went, Kincade was waiting impatiently, checking his pocket-watch. 

'I'll come back as soon as I can. In the meantime, I've engaged a governess to tutor you and hopefully be a companion to you...'

Q nodded. 

'Good-bye, then.'

Bond squeezed his hand one last time before stepping away, into the carriage. 

'Good-bye, little wildcat!' he called. 

Q stood with his hands jammed in his pockets, watching the carriage as it drove down the drive and then was lost to sight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sad!Q needs a hug. And a friend. That's where Moneypenny comes in. This chapter was hard to write because of the feels, and I wanted Bond to be like 'fuck the job, I've got Q'. Don't worry, y'all - he won't be gone long. Only one chapter, if I can help it. I mean, who could stay away from pretty baby Q?


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait, all. I had a bit of a writer's block and found it hard to get started again, but I feel back in the flow of things now. Hopefully this chapter without Bond isn't too jarring, as this fic so far has mostly been about him obsessing over nubile little Q, so now we get a little insight into Q. At least that's the plan, mostly it's his lonely shenanigans in Skyfall. 
> 
> Did I say this was inspired by Wilde and Dickens? Well, this ceased to be anything resembling an urban gothic a while ago, now I'd say I'm more in a Bronte, or should I say Burnett (as in The Secret Garden), vein... Nothing like bastardising childhood classics for my own perverted purposes. 
> 
> Also when I was in London recently I went to see Mojo and although I had bad seats and could only see the very top of the actors' heads - though what lovely heads they were- and Ben Whishaw as Baby simply stole the show, although Colin Morgan and his bare legs hold a close second in my heart. Between Mojo and Perfume I'm convinced Whishaw's made to play evil-elfin characters (or at least deranged, Daddy-issues ones). 
> 
> I'll stop babbling, but stay tuned. Also thanks for those who didn't give up hope and left kudos and comments. Your patience will be repaid, and is much appreciated :)

+

Q didn't cry; he was far too old for that, at least in front of these strangers, no matter how kindly Kincade appeared. The Missus watched him with her sharp black eyes, and he felt as though she saw through him, saw how desolate he was without James; a man he'd known for only a short week. A man who had saved him and taken him in, but not like a foster father at all. 

He had seen the hunger in those pale blue eyes, and returned it two-fold; the heady knowledge that he was wanted, lusted, perhaps even needed, pulsing in his veins. But then to be left only the morning after – Q had known James' plans, but still, to be left so soon, when things were just beginning to change between them... It was almost too much to bear. 

Q had no idea when he would return, either. This, more than anything, made him afraid. Commander James Bond had slipped through his fingers, and who was to say when he would come back? If indeed he would at all. 

+

Without a word, the boy bolted upstairs. Kincade and M stared after him, making no move to follow. 

'Where's the wee lad off to, then?' Kincade asked, scratching his whiskers. 

'Oh, let him be. I'm of the opinion he needs some time on his own to rest. He will warm to us in time.'

'Aye, so I gather myself. But who is the laddie then? I've heard tell of no Fraser-Smiths, and I reckon he bears no relation to the Bonds. But his dark colouring remembers Lady Vesper...'

'It's no business of ours who the boy is; only to care for him in Bonds' absence, although I'll wager he is no Fraser-Smith either. If you ask me, the letter Q is name enough for the boy, so we needn't trouble ourselves with his other designation.'

+

In the meantime, Q had made his way to his bedchamber, giving himself over to a fit of angry tears, throwing himself on top his bed once safely alone. The sheets hadn't been changed, and the scent of Bond and their sweat and spilt seed lingered, the latter crusting below his body. He shuddered to think of what Mrs Kincade would say – or worse, the look she would give him – after washing the sheets. She would know, and what would she think? That he was James' kept boy, his margery? It was not far from the truth, much as he would deny it. 

But what did it matter now? The night was over, the deed done, Bond gone. What on earth would become of him in this empty manor house, with only two old domestics to watch him, probably to ensure he didn't make off with the family silver. 

Eventually, Q's sobs subsided. He turned on his side to stare moodily out the high casement windows at the bleak winter sky beyond, watching as the grey clouds begin to snow, striking against the house with the wailing of the wind. 

+

He forced himself to climb out of bed, wrapping a quilt around himself for warmth before going to the nursery next door, where a crackling fire has been built while he wept. There were bookshelves on either side of the mantlepiece, and out of apathy the boy studied the spines to distract himself from his thoughts. 

Q pulled out books by Dickens and Poe, but sunk into the large hearthside armchair with a book of Edward Lear poems, a small smile growing over his face as he became absorbed in the nonsense lyrics. He wondered if this had been James' old room as a boy, if he had ever read these poems and smiled to himself, but he couldn't imagine him as a boy like himself. James Bond had surely always been a man with a hardened face and eyes like ice; something in him had been damaged for a very long time indeed. 

He thought to himself how absurd it is to miss him so much; a man of merely a weeks' acquaintance, a night's passion – a man, a soldier, a killer, a lover... a stranger. But he was not that last, at least, no stranger to Q. He got up, placing the book on the chair, and began to pace the room like a caged animal, his mind whirring obsessively, uselessly, gazing into the flames, then out of the windows, looking at the ground far below. 

+

The boy's eyes caught on a small door in the wall, oddly placed and subtly painted – a dumbwaiter, which was familiar to him from his time at Silva's establishment, in which champagne and other delicacies had been delivered to the patrons in their rooms for the night. 

Q opened it, staring into the shaft as it disappeared into darkness, reaching inside to draw on the rasping pulley rope, pulling it up quickly despite the skinniness of his arms. His mind was empty of thoughts, his face blank as he forced himself inside the wood receptacle, curling himself into a small ball, his head bent to the side, temple to his knees. The dumbwaiter creaked beneath his weight, swinging shakily; his eyes widened in fear. This was foolish, suicidal, but it was far too late. 

Frightened but intent, Q unfastened the rope, keeping a taunt grip, but it slid through his hands, burning his palms as the dumbwaiter began to uncontrollably drop down the shaft. Convinced he would die, a shriek ripped from his throat, yet by some miracle, Q grasped the rope again and clutched at it, halting the device mid-chute. It moved to and fro, banging against the sides like the clapper in a bell; Q breathed in great gasps, his heart pounding madly in his chest. 

+

He waited for a moment, gathering his courage, before exercising all his strength to release a little rope at a time, descending slowly with grating sound. The first room he came to with the dumbwaiter door left open was what appeared to be a trophy room, displaying an impressive array of stuffed and mounted animal remains, from a glass-eyed lion to long ivory elephant tusks, even what Q dimly recognised as a rhinoceros from an illustrated book he had read long ago. 

His stomach turned at the sight of the dead and preserved wildlife; a London boy born and bred, Q had little familiarity with animals apart from street dogs and feral cats, and the rats, cockroaches and bedbugs that infested living quarters. But these beautiful, exotic creatures... It seemed a sin to capture and kill them for sport, for spoils. 

What use could glass cases of pinned butterflies and beetles be to anyone, or for that matter, stuffed fowl, fish and turtles? While James could hardly have amassed it all within his lifetime, he had not doubt contributed to the room with the plunder from his many travels. Q couldn't imagine James' having any scientific interest in these animals, so likely he was only interested in the hunt, the quarry, the trophy; if this was so, it did not bode well for his dealings with humans, with Q himself. Was he too only prey to be chased, possessed, and discarded at will?

With a shiver, Q turned from the sad, fathomless eyes of the animals and the empty, staring sockets of the skulls and continued to lower the dumbwaiter, disappearing down the shaft.


	15. Chapter 15

The dumbwaiter landed with a thump, having arrived at the end of the chute. Q cautiously opened the door, finding himself in a damp room off the kitchen, where he can see silhouettes moving and voices muttering – Mrs Kincade and her husband, no doubt discussing what to make of him – amongst the sounds of cookery.  
He crept out of the dumbwaiter, one of many in the room, fearful of being found. 

Q's body had a stitch in the side and his hands were sore, some skin on his palms scraped from the rope, but he hastened stiffly up the side stone stairs to a dinner hall, grander than the one they'd sat at in the morning or the night before. 

+

The vast room was full of heraldic banners, swords and shields, with hefty oaken benches and tables ordered in the centre; only somewhat intimated by the immensity, Q walked about the circumference curiously. 

As he reached the far end of the room, Q stood still at the sound of low snarls, turning to see four gleaming eyes glowering at him from the doorway. Two hounds stood crouched there, hackles raised and ready to charge, their lips pulling back to bare their shining teeth. 

Q slowly bent down towards the iron heating vent inside the floor, and keeping his eyes fixed on the hounds, he cautiously drew it aside enough to drop down inside the heating duct below. Moments after he fell from view, the dogs attacked; Q was barely able to drag the grate back into place, the dogs' fetid pants grazing his fingers. 

'Bloody buggering fuck!' he whispered to himself, shaking, his arms wrapped tight around his chest. 'Of course the man has bloody hellhounds! Christ!'

The dogs snuffled and snarled above, scratching at the grate, so Q, like the clever boy he was, decided not to linger, and began to worm his way down the length of the duct. Behind him, the dogs continued their frenzied clawing. 

+

'Good Lord, the place is damn labyrinth,' thought Q to himself as he continued to crawl, shortly before reaching a heating grate within the wall opposite the entrance hall. The hall was thankfully empty of either Missus or Mister Kincade, the former presumably in the kitchens and the latter outside, performing whatever routine duties gameskeepers carried out. 

Still slightly shaken, Q felt relieved that no one was present to witness him crawling out of a heating grate – including James, who would only smirk at him, and tousle his hair and suggest that perhaps a bath would not be remiss. 

After watching and waiting for a few moments, the boy finally dared to crawl out, his heart thumping like a common criminal as he stole up the grand stairway opposite the manor doors. 

+

Q had planned to return to his room and rest, the very picture of well-behaved innocence – not that James was there to appreciate it – but for some reason he paused at an intersection of corridors that looked unfamiliar to him, the hallways branching out like spokes on a wheel. Q picked one at random, with a small smile on his face that was both mischievous and boyish, making him look his own age, or perhaps even younger. 

He entered a portrait galley, filled with the stern visages of Bond ancestors from across generations, staring out from their faded canvases, scowling women and men with military bearing: here was James' fair hair and pale blue eyes in a woman carrying a rosary; here his blunt, masculine features – the snub of the nose, the pucker of the mouth, the deep set of the eyes – on a man displaying an axe; more kin bestride horses or standing stiffly, hounds at their sides, concealed behind discoloured armour; more modern men who obscured themselves behind their wealth in magnificent costumes of silk and velvet. 

One portrait in particular caught Q's eye, one of the few women painted, she was one of the more contemporary subjects from the manner of her dress, and yet this was not what struck him; her slanted blue-green eyes seemed knowing, the sleek spill of dark hair sensuous, and remarkably unladylike, her features delicate yet ripe. She wore a filmy pale yellow dress that draped her slender body, rather than forcing it in at the waist, and carried a single pink rose that matched the tint of her lips.

She was a great beauty, but what Q felt was not simple lust or envy, but rather recognition: something about this face he recognised in his own reflection. Not so much her colouring, or features, although there was some slight resemblance. Perhaps it was some shared expression of coyness, a childlike candor and playfulness in the twist of the mouth, the glint of the eye. 

Q wondered who she was. 

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More of Q's adventures exploring Skyfall! 
> 
> This won't go on forever, I promise. Bond will reappear and there will be rather a lot of rogering Q, but first I want Q to grow up a little... in maturity and emotionally (actually Bond could use that too, come to think of it), not in age, because age difference is my biggest kink. Essentially this fic is me indulging in my Victorian pederasty fetish, in case that wasn't apparent as yet. 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, folks!


	16. Chapter 16

The passage was endless, doors upon doors upon doors; Q tested the doorknobs, but they were all bolted shut. One doorknob turned effortlessly beneath his hand, and for an instant, the ease with which it turned nearly terrified Q, thrilling, then disappointing, as the door opened to reveal nothing within but furnishings covered with white linens. 

He swallowed at the ghostly sight, and closed the door to try his hand at opening more. Q climbed a small staircase, reaching a door from underneath which trails of ivy twisted out. He bent to touch it.

'What on earth – Ivy, growing inside?' the boy murmured to himself, dark brows furrowed in confusion as he inspected the plant in his palm. 

Q tried the doorknob, which abruptly rotated, opening to the room beyond.

Feeling both curious and wary, as if trespassing on some forbidden secret, he peeked inside a room grown wild with a snarl of tree boughs, and vines of vivid ivy; Nature, at her most alluring, had taken this place as her own and assumed control. Q could barely believe his eyes – a cracked window was scarcely cracked, apart from the merest spidery split through which plants grown. 

Despite his lingering unease, Q was pulled within the chamber, irresistibly. The floor beneath his feet was blanketed with ivy, which also mantled the walls, the tree boughs formed a protecting grove. In the middle of the chamber, a canopy bed had become an bower of jasmine, climbing plants dense with the sweet-smelling blooms. 

Wild roses framed the dressing table looking-glass, flowering plentifully in the strange greenhouse humidity of the room, as they could not in the harsh Scottish winter outside. 

+

Like a boy in a dream, Q took a seat at the ornately inlaid dressing table, looking at his own reflection. 

'If I was a girl, I could be her twin, or at least her sister. Do you think he'd like that?' he asked the air, nonsensically. 

A yellow picture hat with pink cloth roses dotting the brim dangled off the looking-glass, the roses bleached from sun long ago. Q perched it on his head and grinned at the absurd image of the hat slipping down on one ear, before replacing it on the edge of the glass. A photograph in a silver frame caught his eye; in it a woman – the beautiful brunette from the picture gallery – sat beside none other than James Bond, who appeared years younger, his arm around her, and an easy smile on his face. 

'James?' 

The word snagged in his throat as he studied the picture. He looked so young, so happy, so in love with his lovely wife. Skyfall had once been home to a Mrs. Bond, but who? What had happened to make Bond the hard man he was now, the cold-hearted killer and seducer he pretended to be? And what on earth could he want with a boy like Q, a street urchin and a boy-whore, when his wife's former room were left untouched, a shrine to the woman he had lost?

Carefully, Q laid the photograph back in place, beside a silver hairbrush, comb and silver hand-glass, all inscribed with the initials, V.B. His hands trembling, Q lifted the brush, and as if in a reverie, instinctively began brushing his dark curls. Discovering a pot of rouge, he touched a tinted finger to his lips, staining them a deep berry red. 

+

Footfalls in the passageway beyond paralyzed him in his seat, as did the voices that accompanied them.

'Where on God's green earth can that foolish boy have gone?'

'Dinnae worry yourself Em, the wee lad can't have got far,'

Just as the footfalls seemed to pass, a dog snout snuffled beneath the door, alarming Q. He plunged ivy-velvet floor as the damned dogs whimper and claw the door outside. Wide-eyed, Q searched around the room for some possible escape, noticing another heating grate. 

He scurried over to it, and hands trembling, unhinges the metal frame, compelling himself back inside the shaft. He crawled away, panting, inside the reverberating, dirty duct, the darkness pierced only by infrequent ray of faint light coming in from a room. 

'I am never climbing into one of these things again,' Q promised himself grimly as he crawled along on his hands and knees.

'No matter what secrets Skyfall holds.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok guys, I promise this is the last chapter of Q climbing around inside of heating grates like the little creepster he is. Next chapter will introduce Eve, finally, and also catch up with Bond wherever the hell he is, no doubt obsessing over his pretty underage ward. 
> 
> The idea for Vesper's room I kind of stole from Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, because I watched the Hitchcock film version with my mom recently. I just have to say Mrs Danvers and the deceased Rebecca are a hell of a lot more interesting than the passive unnamed heroine. 
> 
> Speaking of Gothicness, Craig!Bond is totally a Byronic hero, you know, brooding, charismatic, selfish, passionate... All that fun stuff.
> 
> As always, thanks for reading, and kudos and comments make me squee like a toddler.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok, I'm giving a trigger warning for racism and sexism towards a woman of colour, which has already happened in this fic with Severine, but I just want to play safe and make it clear I do not in any way condone any of the bigoted rhetoric. Hopefully I portrayed the nexus of race and gender in Victorian Britain sensitively yet realistically without being too anachronistic. 
> 
> Also, I just wanted to thank everybody who has commented, given kudos, subscribed or even read this fic for being so awesome and supportive, not to mention patience with my need to describe things and lack of smut. This is the longest thing I've ever written, and over the longest period of time, so I'm chuffed with myself and my readers... Now to get to the good stuff! It's coming, I swear... Bond and Q will be reunited and have sexytimes!
> 
> Seriously, though, thank you all for making it fun to write :)
> 
> Oh, and I had fun writing Eve as a kind of Jane Eyre character. Gotta love the governess in Victorian fiction... Plus Q needs a friend and mentor who doesn't wanna jump his bones.

Miss Eve Moneypenny sat in the second-class carriage of the train from Edinburgh to Inverness. She wore a dove-grey traveling dress and shawl, her wiry hair pinned into a chignon beneath a plain bonnet, gloved hands folded over the Bible on her lap. Her luminous dark skin received many looks from her fellow passengers, from the curious stare to the hostile glare, one middle-age lady going so far as to insist on moving compartments, sniffing about the 'state of the rails today.' 

Eve ignored them, her faced composed, her eyes fixed on the scenery rolling by outside the window, even when two of the porters skulked nearby. 

'Ye cannae help but wonder if her cunt's as black as her hide,' jeered one, loud enough for her to hear. 

'Aye, though she no' wearing skins like the pygmy darkies I saw at the Glasgae exhibition,' sneered the other. 

+

She took no outward notice of them, glad that they could not see the flush of anger and humiliation rising to her cheeks. Eve had heard her share of ugly, hateful comments in her short life, worse than the porters' words perhaps; but at least in London there lived people of all sorts, of all creeds and races, and though they might face prejudice from others, within communities living on the fringe of society, bonds were forged for life. 

So she had witnessed, if not experienced herself, when pamphleteering the inner-city slums in the company of Reverend and Mistress Moneypenny, who had raised her, and given her their name. They were well-intentioned Evangelical reformers who condemned immorality, vice and the institution of slavery; their abolitionist society had aided her mother and others like her. When her mother died from a smallpox outbreak, Reverend Moneypenny had taken her as his own, barren as his wife was, and bestowed on her the name Eve - a strange choice for a black orphan, when most others were the more virtuous Mary, Anne or Elizabeths. 

They loved her, and she them, the only family she had ever known, yet the knowledge that she was different, always an outsider no matter how pious or well-educated, she was merely an example of the civilised savage, a Christianised heathen of darkest Africa. 

+

But there was no sense on dwelling on the past – Eve determined to carve out a life for herself with her gifts and learning, working for two dispiriting years as a teacher at a reformatory for wayward girls, where speaking French or reading Homer and Shakespeare went unappreciated. 

Seeking other more stimulating opportunities, she came across an usual advertisement in the papers, for a classically-educated governess or tutor to teach a boy of some fourteen years, clever but of uncertain learning, all reasonable expenses paid, at a remote estate in the Scottish highlands, with a contract to be renewed or renegotiated in six months' time.

Expecting nothing, Eve applied nonetheless, and soon after received a curt reply offering the position via a London lawyer, as Commander Bond – whose ward the boy was – was currently stationed abroad. 

It was a highly unconventional undertaking, both in her sex, as normally tutors of the same sex as the pupil were preferred, while her skin colour was either seen as a reason for pity, or else to add a touch of exoticism to a wealthy family's domestic staff. But Commander Bond and his representation did not seem to think it worthy of note either way. And surely a boy of fourteen – who had not been named in the correspondence – should have been boarding at a public school such as Eton or Harrow or Ampleforth. A very odd case all-round, but Miss Eve Moneypenny had never been one to reject the possibility of uncertainty, or an adventure. 

In the midst of her thoughts, the train whistle sounded, pulling into the small station. Eve watched the sky above, darkening quickly, before hastening out of the carriage. She stood on the platform at a loss, clutching her portmanteau and shivering in the chill winter air. Perhaps this was all a terrible mistake. 

+

'Excuse me, ye wouldn't happen to be a Miss Moneypenny, would ye?' asked a voice from behind, gravelly and thickly accented. Eve turned after a small start, facing a white-whiskered man of sixty-five who resembled nothing so much as Father Christmas in a tartan cap and scarf. 

'Yes, I am Miss Moneypenny, a pleasure to meet you, sir –'

'It's plain old Jock Kincaide, Miss, but ye call me Kincaide. Even me Missus does.'

'Very well, Kincaide. I hope I haven't kept you waiting in the cold.'

'I'm a Scot, born and bred, so I'm pretty well used to Highland winters, though I reckon they're a bit of a shock to you southerners! Let me carry ye're bag now so we can hurry home for supper, aye?'

He shouldered her portmanteau, depositing it on the cart waiting on the other side of the platform before helping Eve to take a place beside him on the seat. 

Stark, leafless trees lined the road, the cart jolting and rattling teeth as they drove over a bridge. 

'I was no' expecting ye to have an accent like the Queen herself,' said Kincaide conversationally. 

Eve froze, though his tone was pleasant. 

'I've been told eventually the novelty wears off,' she replied, a touch of ice in her voice. 

'Oh, I meant no disrespect, Miss Moneypenny. My Em is always telling me off for running at the mouth. Truly, I meant no offense.'

'None taken, Kincaide,' she said with an even voice, although she wondered...

In London, at least, there was a Caribbean population amongst others, yet here, in the distant Highlands, how many locals had seen a black person in their lives, or one not serving as an exhibit or spectacle in a sideshow?

+

Lost in her worries, a great manor appeared to suddenly loom before her, a edifice of grim stone punctuated by parapets and turrets. It seemed like something out of a dream – or a nightmare. From high above, only two windows burn bright in the darkness. 

'Skyfall,' said Kincaide, laconic yet full of pride, cart slowing to a standstill. Gripping a lantern, he handed Eve down as the large oak door opened on groaning hinges. 

A sharp-eyed, black-clad matron with the manner of a grand lady appeared in the doorway, holding a candle against the night. Eve knew without words that this was the mistress of Skyfall and Kincaide's wife, in that succession. Mrs. Kincaide looked at her with neither welcome nor enmity, merely a steady, assessing grey gaze. 

'How do you do, Miss Moneypenny?'

'Very well. Mrs. Kincaide, I presume.'

'Indeed I am. Do come in out of the cold, you must be quite numb.'

Eve allowed herself to be lead into the parlour where a fire crackled in the grate. Mrs. Kincaide took her damp bonnet and cloak, draping them out to dry. 

'I must say you seem quite young, but then so is the boy. I'm sure you shall be quite satisfactory.'

'I am twenty, and have been teaching in some manner or another since the age of sixteen.'

Mrs. Kincaide's mouth quirked in amusement. 

'Perhaps more than merely satisfactory, in that case. Do help yourself to a drop of my mulled wine and pie.'

Eve ate as suggested, attempting not to demolish the meal in her hunger; Mrs. Kincaide took up her knitting, the needles stabbing like weapons. 

+

Her supper finished, Eve was led through the grand entrance hall, illuminated only by Mrs. Kincaide's candle, barely able to make out a sumptuously-sculpted fireplace, heavy tapestries, an ancient mounted stag's head. She shivered in the gloom, her breath forming visible clouds in the chill air. 

'Am I meeting Mr Bond tonight?' she asked with slight hesitance.

'Pardon?'

'Mr Bond, my pupil?'

'You mean Q; Commander Bond's ward. He is to be your pupil; you shall meet him on the morrow.'

'I see, my apologies.'

'Not at all. With you and the boy here, I've no doubt this house will be lively once again.'

'Yes, of course. You mentioned that the boy's... that his name is Q?'

'Ah, yes, Q. You know how these old families are with their small eccentricities, diminutives such as Flopsy and the like. But Q is a bit of an oddity, as you will see. He is a law unto himself, but a dear child all the same. He adores his guardian, naturally, and was devastated to be left here. I daresay your arrival shall cheer him up. Here we are,' 

She opened the door to a small but charming room where a fire burns at the hearth, a velvety bedspread and chintz drapes. 

'I hope you will find this room agreeable to your nights. Good night, Miss Moneypenny.'

Eve smiled her thanks, moved despite herself. The door closed softly behind her, like a whisper.


	18. Chapter 18

The next morning, Eve entered the library to meet her pupil. Q was an exquisitely beautiful boy of about fourteen, with lush dark curls and wary green eyes. He sat in the window seat with an open book on his lap – The Three Musketeers – his gaze inscrutable. Immediately, Eve sensed this boy was painfully withdrawn and alone, dwarfed by the large dark room filled with musty leather-bound books. 

'Q, I presume?' She asked, more seriously than she'd meant to. 

'Miss Moneypenny, I presume?' He parroted back, unsmiling. Eve couldn't help the twitch of her mouth in amusement. She looked at him more intently; a pretty child, but miserable. A boy with a past. 

'Very well, Q, if that is how you would begin our acquaintance.'

Abashed, he looked at the floor, unable to meet her sharp eyes.

'If we are to pass every day in the others' company, would you tell me about yourself? Your guardian has failed to relate much of anything about you.'

Q remained silent, playing the sullen adolescent. 

'Where did you reside, Q, prior to arriving at Skyfall?'

'In a whore-house, with a procurer. He now resides in hell.'

Eve was at a loss for words, staring at her new pupil. His face hadn't changed whilst delivering that extraordinary speech.

'You are a liar. How dare you?'

'No, Miss. There were girls there who looked like you; they danced in feathers and sang tribal songs for the men. At night I used to sit on their laps and recite poetry. They liked that. Would you like me to perform for you?'

She struck his face, the sound of her palm meeting his cheek resounding in her ears. He looked at her in quiet triumph, pale skin glowing red with a handprint. Eve was horrified at herself for being so provoked; she felt sick, wanted to run from the room and this strange creature with eyes like a wounded animal. 

'My apologies. I should not have – struck you. It is unforgivable.' 

He merely shrugged his thin shoulders. 

'Come with me, Eve.'

'I do not recall giving you leave to use my Christian name,' she said tartly. 

Q did not reply, just waited for her to follow out of the room.

+

They crossed from one corridor into another until Eve was thoroughly lost. Q climbed a wooden staircase, the Georgian leaded windows mirroring their ascent into a portrait gallery of long-passed forebears of the Bond family, all framed with heavy dark wallhangings. They came to a standstill in front of the portrait with the freshest paint, one of a striking fair-haired man with strong features and a square jaw. Eve glimpsed her companion's mouth tremble slightly at the sight. She found herself unsettled by the man's aggressive expression, as if his pale painted eyes bored through her clothing into her very skin.

'Do you think him handsome?' 

Q's voice broke through her disgraceful thoughts, and she flushed with a start. 

'I could not say.' Eve replied primly, her hands clasped in front of her skirts. 

'Oh come now, Eve, don't be the schoolmarm! You yourself said we should be friends...' He coaxed, eyes wide and pleading. 

'I said no such words, but very well. I suppose he is not displeasing to the eye.'

'Oh, you do find him handsome!' crowed Q. 'As do I. He is the very model of manhood.' His eyes were bright, giving him the impish look of a young child.

'Oh? And what is the identity of this 'model of manhood'?' asked Eve, curious in spite of herself.

'You might have guessed. He is Commander James Bond, master of Skyfall and my guardian.' Q's voice became wistful. 

'Ah.' She desperately wished to ask if they were relations, as their appearances could not have been more disparate, and if so, how their connection had come about, but feared becoming intrusive. Surely he was not a catamite as he had claimed, that was merely a falsehood meant to provoke her... Yet what if this Commander Bond was a wealthy sodomite with a taste for youths, and Q was his kept boy... It was absurd, unthinkable; a foolish fancy which she forced from her mind.

+

'He's abroad now. I haven't the faintest idea where, or when he'll return.' The boy bit his lower lip, eyes far away. 

Eve cleared her throat. 

'Shall we start your studies with French, or perhaps geography?' 

Her pupil groaned. 'Must we start today?'

'Or else we take the air. You could do with some sun,' she said, reprovingly. 

Q looked appalled. 'Sun? In Scotland? Don't be daft. We would shortly be frostbitten and turn blue.'

'Then I suppose studies would suit.' Eve gave him a feline smile. 

Q sighed. 'If we must.' 

He followed her, turning to cast a final look at the portrait, its piercing eyes seeming to watch him go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So Q and Eve are bros. Eventually, although Eve might have the hots for Bond. Next chapter catches up with Bond, finally, and I swear the next five chapters won't follow him bumming about the outposts of empire, brooding over Q, because our lovebirds have spent enough time apart, am I right?
> 
> My thanks to Siobhandragonsmother for telling me about writing Mrs Fairfax instead of Mrs Kincaide last chapter. My apologies to the wonderful Dame Judi Dench.
> 
> As always, I'm grateful for any kudos/comments/readers. Enjoy!


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that this chapter contains Orientalism and imperialism, as it takes place in colonial India. Bond is an imperialist, or at least complicit in the imperial project given the context of this fic, as well as his age, class and profession, not to mention his canon!loyalty to Queen and country. These ideologies are problematic, but it's a large part of the British values of the time period, and I tried to accurately depict that.
> 
> As always, hope you guys enjoy, and next period is reunion time! Thanks for reading, and any kudos/comments.

Commander James Bond sat alone on the veranda of the Great Eastern Hotel in Calcutta, smoking Egyptian cigarettes in a linen suit, looking for all the world like another wealthy merchant of the East India Company, who dominated the elite establishment's clientele. 

Lost in thought, he watched a game of cricket being played on the lawn by ministers of the Foreign Office and their wives. The mission had been executed fairly cleanly, all things considered; only one diplomat and his beautiful native mistress were dead, which from the looks of it had not in the least hampered the smooth functioning of imperial bureaucracy. 

The Russian threat to British hegemony in Bengal was contained, a rogue operative eliminated, and for the moment, the Jewel in the Imperial Crown was secure, and Bond's return home awaited only on word from the Raj. He still suffered slight burns from an unfortunate encounter with gunpowder, lacerations from a jewel-handled dagger, and bruises from a fight which had broken out in the marketplace and traumatised half the city's populous. Quite the success, all things considered.

+

So why had he been unable to shake thoughts of the boy he'd left behind in Scotland, even in the lithe arms of the Governor General's wife, or between the silken sheets of Prince Ranji's bed? Even now, when he was no longer entangled in the dark jungle's climbing vines and twisted trees, where a Fakir had prayed from his perch on a high branch and predators watched from between leaves, their eyes fixed on a band of mustachioed English officers showing off a slain tiger and tusked boar.

Bond wondered what Q would make of this sunburnt place, still so alien and wild despite their best attempts to tame it, where servants laved elephants in the river, and bare-footed, thin-legged children playing games of football on the muddy bank. Not so long ago he had been an urchin in the London slums, as squalid and filth-ridden as any in Calcutta...

Now, Bond would have outfitted him like a little prince, perhaps with jade drops to match the colour of his eyes, take him to ride on the back of a painted and bejeweled elephant, holding him securely in his arms within the rocking palanquins...

+

From inside the ballroom just beyond the French doors opening onto the veranda, a military orchestra struck up a stirring, jingoistic piece whilst domestics crawled on all fours, waxing the marble floor until it reflected their brown faces. High above their heads, an enormous chandelier was suspended, its crystals ringing and dinging together in the slight breeze. A ball was to be thrown that evening for the Maharajah of Punjab, and no expense was spared by the hotel. 

Suddenly, a movement darting across the path caught the corner of his eye. It was a rat, bigger than his fist, no strange sight in the slums were they swarmed and lived off refuse, but a rare one indeed on the grounds of the Grand Eastern. Squealing madly, first one then another and another rat ran out from underneath the luxurious veranda across the pathway and into copse of trees on the other side where a lady, fanning herself languidly in the shade, jumped up with a shriek of horror. 

Bond watched the proceedings with amazement, both amused and somewhat uneasy as a soldier lurking nearby neatly shot the largest of the rats, and a servant rushed over to the woman's side, offering the hotel's profuse apologies. 

A stream of rats... Traditional harbingers of disease and death. This place, the Raj, was beautiful and decadent, but decayed to the core, but nonetheless Bond had performed his duty to the crown. 

+

He stood and sauntered across the lawn, following in the rats' path. They had vanished, but beyond the copse lay a lily pond, the kaleidoscopic blooms curving downwards in the evening breeze. It was a lovely little place, isolated from the presence and noise of the indolent colonial elite. Almost unconsciously, Bond reached out and plucked a lily, lying small and delicate in his hand before he tucked it into his pocket. 

There was a pond in the hills beyond Skyfall, where Bond hadn't been since he was very young. Perhaps there were lilies there too, or small silvery fish darting beneath the surface; he could take Q there, row him across in dory in the spring, or next winter if it froze through, he could teach him to skate...

They would create their own world there, far from the eyes of lords and ladies, generals, dukes, government officials, captains and colonels who would judge and condemn with self-righteous gossip. He could not expose Q to them, anymore than throw him to the wolves. 

All this was supposing, of course, that Q had not changed his mind, grown wary of the implications of loving and being loved by a man like Bond; which would no doubt be for the best, and were he more honourable, less selfish and greedy and consumed with need for his fey boy-child, whose face and limbs haunted his dreams and waking hours, he might have given him up. But he was not. 

+

Bond wandered back to the terrace, the soft petals of the lily seeming to sear through the fabric of his jacket into his very skin, the sky above strangely overcast. He ordered a whiskey, and while he drained it, a server appeared with a letter on a silver plate. The envelope was addressed from the Foreign Office. Tearing it open, Bond read it, the crease in his brow softening. He stood, folding the letter into his inner pocket and strolled into the hotel foyer, stopping at the front desk.

'Prepare my bill.'

The hotel clerk bowed his head deferentially. 

'At once, sir. A carriage shall be waiting.'

Bond strode away, a slight quirk on his lips.


	20. Chapter 20

The hounds in their kennel bayed as a carriage came to a halt in the courtyard. Eve glanced out of one of the upper storey windows, biting her lip as she glimpsed a man who could only be Q's fabled Commander Bond stepping out of the coach.

In the kennel, the hounds whined at the sight of their master, squatting and whipping their tails low. Bond barely acknowledged them, his thoughts fixed elsewhere; the front door banging closed behind him. 

+

In the greenhouse, which he had helped Kincaide build from an unused toolshed, Q paused in crushing sprays of heather, myrtle and thistle with a mortar and pestle. His large grey-black eyes squinted behind his new spectacles towards the far-off baying of the dogs, hardly perceptible over the sound of the gathering storm above. 

He tilted his head, attempt to hear the baying over the gale beyond the glass. He did not hear it any longer and turned back to the task at hand. Outside of the greenhouse, leaves whirled in the wind like specters of trees. 

+

Bond mounted the staircase without removing his traveling cloak. M accompanied him, her pace not slowed by age. 

'You might have sent word of your return, but then you have never been one to convenience others. Shall I fetch anything – or anyone – for you, James?'

'I think that is not necessary.'

'No? Shall I gather the governess, then?'

'No.'

'Oh? Do you ever intend to meet the newest member of your staff, or are you planning to send her away without ever laying eyes on her? It would be a shame, given how close she and the boy have become of late...' said M, slyly. 

'Whomever are you referring to,' replied Bond stiffly. 

'Why, Q – or shall I say Charles Fraser-Smith – your ward, a most delightful creature whom you liberated from the most sordid pits of London. Surely you recall him.'

Bond did not dignify her with a response; at the top of the staircase, he turned in the direction of Q's room. M watched him. 

'You'll not find him in there, James.'

'Then where the hell is he?' snapped Bond.

At Q's door, he unhesitatingly threw it open. As M had predicted, the room was vacant of its occupant. Bond swallowed. This was not at all how he'd envisioned his homecoming. He spun around to confront M's frowning face. 

'Where is he?' Bond demanded. 

She strolled into the room past him and glanced about, eyes eagle-sharp.

'It's as I told you. Good heavens, there is no need to panic, James. We don't confine him to his rooms.'

As Bond turned to leave, he caught sight of something familiar on top of a carved wooden bureau. It was a photograph of himself and Vesper, their frozen images smiling out of the silver-frame. Bond gazed back at it, transfixed. 

M stood motionless behind him. Finally Bond turned away, shattering the spell of lost days of youth and happiness. 

'In all likelihood he's with Miss Moneypenny,' said M, evenly.

'What?' Bond started. 'Oh, yes, of course...'

+

In the greenhouse, Q hummed to himself as he crushed vanilla pods, releasing the sweet scent into the air to mix with the moorland fragrance of the other flora which he would later enfleurage with lard or tallow.

+

Bond strode down the hallway leading to Eve's room, M following closely behind. 

'I gather the mission met with success?'

'Yes, of course. Would you expect any less of me?'

M sniffed. 'Certainly.'

They arrived at her door, and Bond, accustomed to barging into any room in Skyfall as he pleased, remembered to knock. There was no reply. 

'What on earth? If this is some homecoming game of yours, M –'

She cut him off with a black look before opening the door herself. The room, like Q's, was empty. 

'Don't be a fool, James. I'm not in the habit of locking governesses in their rooms.'

'I am weary from my journey, I would like a brandy, and I am growing impatient with this chase,' Bond ground out with gritted teeth.

'I think I know where I'll find him.'

M spun around and marched off, followed by a glowering Bond.

'At times I wonder if I'm the true master of Skyfall.'

+

Still humming, Q took a break from the extraction process to pop a handful ripe cloudberries into his mouth, the beads of juice bursting on his tongue.

+

Bond strode straight to the greenhouse, climbing with fruit trees and ivy vines. Through the glass panes of the unlocked door he could see the Q's back. The boy was taller, but slight and willowy as ever, his sloping shoulders, slim white neck and head of glossy blue-black curls just as he had remembered for so many days and nights of many months. 

He watched the boy humming and tinkering about with flowers on the table, loath to disrupt him as though he were a sprite or sylph and might slip away. Q turned, reaching for something; he saw Bond and stopped in his tracks, staring. 

Bond was paralyzed at the sight of that face, delicate as an ivory cameo; behind the new spectacles - which made him look like a little owl - were the haunting large grey eyes, pupils dilating. Q staggered slightly, and it appeared as if he might fall over. The wind blowing through the open door rose around him, gusting as if to bear him up.

'Q?' asked Bond, sounding so uncertain that he wanted to hit himself. His eyelids flickered, mistrusting his vision. 

'James,' said Q, the breath catching in his throat.

'Look at you...' Bond murmured.

Q nodded, abruptly beaming like a lunatic. It was adorable, absurd, delightful. He slowly walked across the floor to him, extending his arms. 

'I take it you approve?' Q asked, both bashful and coy, pushing the specs up the bridge of his nose, tripping towards his guardian. Bond moved forward to meet him, lifting his boy into his arms.

The other residents of Skyfall watched their embrace from a distance. 

+

Bond clasped Q close, inhaling the fragrance of the nape of his neck. 

'My God, what is that divine scent? You smell good enough to eat, Q.'

The comment earned him a laugh from Q, who giggled into his shoulder. 

'I know you will tease me mericlessly, but you may have noticed the additions to this shed, which is now my laboratory, as I thought you might not appreciate all of Skyfall reeking of perfume...'

'I see that I have a master perfumer on my hands, who is tempting me to consider the merits of cannibalism,' said Bond, putting his ward softly down to marvel at his face.

Q batted him away, feeling shy and waspish. Bond stared in awe at the greenhouse, overflowing with blossoms. 

'Good lord, there's an entire garden in here!'

'Yes, that's generally the idea of a greenhouse,' replied the boy, who watched him with an edge of anxiety, as if he were afraid Bond did not approve. 

'I can't believe it. Evidently, I can't leave you to your own devices for so long...'

Q shifted uncomfortably, avoiding Bond's teasing eyes.

'You're a wonder, Q.' 

The boy peered up at him, blinking owlishly, entirely unaware of how damnably lovely he was. 

Bond proffered his hand, tall and fair and intimidatingly masculine in his dark cape. He cleared his throat. 

'I hope you are happy here, Q. Skyfall is your home now. I know I haven't been much of a guardian to you but I intend to change that, if you will allow,'

Utterly enthralled, Q took Bond's large, gloved hand in his own slender, bare one, drawing him down to kiss him in answer.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I do apologize for the long hiatus -- essay time crept up on me again, leading to another month of academic madness. But now it's SPRANG BRAKE, and I have time to write for fun again. 
> 
> I have another chapter (with porn!) to upload as well. As always, thanks for reading folks, and for bearing with me!

They were still locked in an embrace when a deliberate cough let it be known that they were no longer alone. Bond and Q detangled themselves, as though reluctant to part; the glint in Bond's eyes and the quirk to his lips hinted at his happiness, while Q smiled so broadly his face seemed to be in danger of splitting in two. 

Eve stood in the doorway of the greenhouse, radiant in a buttercup-yellow dress, her dark curls pinned in a bouffant, her arms in long white gloves. Bond was not so kiss-dazed as to miss that her eyes were icy despite the warmth of her sienna skin. 

'You must be Q's governess. I am James Bond, the master of this magnificent ruin,' he said, indicating the gothic sprawl of Skyfall behind her. 

'I am Miss Moneypenny, as you have surmised. It is a pleasure to meet you in the flesh, Commander Bond; I have heard so much of you from my pupil,'

Bond bowed over her gloved hand. She was a great beauty, one he would once have chased over the corners of the earth for a taste... But not now. Miss Eve Moneypenny, rare flower that she was, looked to be the disapproving sort like so many a schoolmarm. 

'All good things, I very much hope,' he replied with a wolfish smile. 

'Oh yes, James – Uncle James, I've told her of all your dreadful deeds, the worst of which was rescuing me from a house of sin,' piped Q ingenuously. 

Bond and Eve both turned to look at him, momentarily silenced. 

+

'I can't say I've regretted it, little devil that you are. Although I must say, Miss Moneypenny, he seems much tamed since I was last here, no doubt entirely due to your efforts. The spectacles are an improvement, although I'm not sure what to make of the perfumery...' His voice betrayed his fondness. 

Eve softened at Bond's evident affection for her charge. 

'I'm afraid I mustn't take all responsibility for any progress Q has made thus far; he single-handedly devised a more efficient heating system within the chutes, using less coal. I haven't the faintest idea of how he engineered it, my strengths are languages and the classics. Remarkable, really.'

'Yes, he is,' agreed Bond, smirking at the boy, whose face flushed at the words of his governess. Bond could well imagine how Q had come upon the idea, crawling into a heating shaft like the curious kit he was.

'It's not quite remarkable,' Q protested, busying himself by polishing his spectacles. 'My current project is much more interesting, as I'm attempting to discover the best method of fragrance extraction. I've yet to try steam or alcohol distillation, although they are likely most potent.'

'And not yet fifteen years of age, you prodigy!' Bond reached over and tousled his curls, Q squawking and playfully pushed him away.

'Do be careful of his spectacles,' interjected Eve, reprovingly. 'I discovered Q's poor eyesight not long after my arrival when he failed to read what I had written on my slate, while he could read what was placed in front of him well enough.'

'Eve took me to an optometrist in Edinburgh, and he made the glass lenses for me. Everything is much sharper now, and I am less troubled by headaches, but I'm not entirely sure my clear sight has improved your looks, Uncle dear,' teased Q, and Bond wanted nothing so much in the world as to throw him over his shoulder and swat his pert little derriere. 

'Nonsense, you rascal,' he scolded. 

'While I am loath to interrupt such a spirited reunion, I think it is nearly time for supper. We mustn't keep Mrs. Kincaide waiting,'

'Of course you are correct. I shudder at the thought of offending the good lady. Come along, Q,' said Bond, more jovial than Q had ever heard him. 

+

They followed Eve into the house, drifting along and touching arms now and again. 

'Tell me, Q, should I be envious of Miss Moneypenny's place in your affections?' murmured Bond to his ward. The boy laughed at the thought.

'Don't be a fool, James. I adore Eve, but I have no wish to bed her. She is my teacher and my dearest friend, and you must be good to her, or I will not allow you to kiss me.' 

Q's eyes shone with mischief, and Bond wanted to declare: 'To hell with supper and pleasing M.'

But instead he merely followed the boy-nymph into the dining room where M, Kincaide and a lavish spread awaited; the latter with whiskey-soaked good cheer and the former with a glint in her eyes hinting that she knew their attendance of the meal was purely perfunctory. 

'To Master Jamie and his happy return from the wilds of India!' toasted Kincaide, and all the table raised their glass, Eve drinking her wine with a contemplative look fixed on her employer while even Q was allowed a dram. Bond smiled wryly as he carved the roast, feeling home at long last.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Homosexual bodice-ripping part 1. First attempt at smut in aaages; hope it's worth the blue balls I've made everyone suffer... Part 2 to follow later.

'Q,' said Bond, one arm round his waist, the other cupping the nape of his neck, toying with the dark curls there. They had bid the others good-night and retired for the evening to Q's bedchamber; once, so very long ago, the room belonged to the boy James had been. 

The maddening boy looked up at him, now mere inches shorter than him, his pretty lips parted, agate eyes dilated beneath the spectacles. Bond kissed his mouth tenderly, feeling the flush spread across the skin beneath his fingers. Q parted only to remove his specs, placing them blindly on a bureau. 

'To think they're only below us...' he murmured, with a grin that reminded Bond of his youth. 

'Hush,' he replied, pulling the boy back into his arms. 'They are all asleep. We are alone, my little love,'

Q said nothing, looking suddenly very young and afraid. Bond cradled his head in his hands, the tips of their noses nearly touching. 

'I love you,' he whispered hoarsely, feeling mad with it. 'I love you,' he repeated, unable to stop the flow of words from his lips. 

'Ahh...' breathed Q at the press of a kiss to the delicate slope of his nose, fingers tangled together.

'I loved you, first as the son I would never have, then as the lover I could never touch –'

'Not anymore. Not since the night before you left. I was yours from the beginning; you could have had me then,' said Q, searching his face earnestly. 

'Not then, but perhaps I am nothing but a hypocrite, saving child-whores from bordellos only to lust after then in my dreams and waking hours... Since I saw you sleeping unclothed that first night like my own little Eros, I've wanted to kiss you, caress you, bite you, gently violate you...'

Bond's eyes were fierce and ravenous, a burning blue. Q stared at him, eyes wide, cheeks hot. 

'I've always known, but I didn't believe it...'

Bond pulled him close, mouthing at the side of his face, sucking at the tender curve of his neck. 

'I love you,' he said, like a man transfixed, devouring. 'I love you...'

He kissed Q's eyelids, the boy gasping and trembling in his arms. 

'I love you.' Bond clenched their fingers together tightly, falling like a predator upon his dewy lips, winding his other hand in the boy's thick curls. 

+

His tongue probed into Q's mouth, sucking his lower lip inside his own to be nibbled, the sound of their kisses loud and relentless. Q panted into his mouth, eagerly licking inside like an untrained puppy, and the thought only made Bond clutch him closer, bending him nearly backwards.

He abandoned Q's swollen lips for the vulnerable flesh of his throat, sucking and biting hard enough to mark him with primal possessiveness, the boy panting and shaking in his arms.

'Ah... James...' He finally choked out. 

'Hm?' said Bond, hand wrapped loosely around the base of his throat, feeling the pulse skittering like a rabbit's beneath his palm. 'What is it, imp?'

Q caught his breath, face flushed and eyes glazed, but he was no longer nervous or afraid, his eyes alight with a teasing gleam. Bond waited. 

'Well, if you must ravish me, I must say I'd prefer it to be done on a bed, at the very least,' said the little rascal, loftily. 

Bond's lip twitched into a half-smirk. 

'Upon my honour as a gentleman, I had no intention of doing anything less, kit,' he drawled in answer.

He stood upright, swinging the boy into his arms like a bride. 

'Ah!' Q cried out.

'You're no longer a bairn, but still light as a feather,' Bond noted, enjoying the weight of him in his arms. 

+

Within a few steps, Q was laid on the bed with a thump, his bedsheets rustling, eyes wide like a startled doe. Bond buried himself in Q's neck once again, savaging the rest of the skin with love bites like a beast. Q's head was thrown back on the pillow, eyes shut and gasping as his shirt was stripped from him, revealing the willowy grace of his chest, the rose-brown pin-pricks of his nipples. 

Bond swooped to kiss one of the rosy buds before drawing it deep into his mouth with a hard suck, holding Q's hips down as he flailed and cried out. Bond moved to the next nipple, pinching the other between his fingers, the boy clenching both hands in the back of his shirt. 

Bond slid Q's trousers off his slip hips, admiring for a moment his white drawers, straining and dampened with his tumescence, the buttoned slits at each side gaping open, before drawing them off of his dream child, his demon lover. 

When he cupped Q's cock, rising from a small thicket of black curls, the boy's eyes flew open, bright with tears. Bond kissed the weeping head of the pretty prick, licking it before drawing it into his mouth.

Q threw his head back, mouth wide and gasping, his shoulders trembling at the sensation, better than what he had remembered, far better than anything he'd ever done alone in the dead of night. Bond licked a stripe from base to tip, recalling what he himself enjoyed, lapping up the boy's drooling pre-spend as if it were nectar, before sucking it deep into his mouth again.

One arm was braced against Q's hips, to keep him from buckling so far he was choked. Q's head and hips thrashed, and he spent himself with a loud cry, pumping great gouts of boy-seed over Bond's tongue like champagne. He caught what he could, and drank the bitter-brine fluid down, still sucking gently as the boy softened to the size of a sweet in his mouth.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now, the moment that everyone's been waiting for! The despoilment/deflowering of faunlet!Q by one Commander Bond, who is old enough to know better... But lucky for us and Q, doesn't let that deter him. 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy, you perverts you. Oh, and I should have mentioned this about three chapters ago when it was actually relevant, but yes I made Q a perfumer in homage to Suskind's brilliant Perfume: Story of a Murderer which is one of my favourite books and everyone should read. And of course the lovely Mr Whishaw performed Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in the movie version...
> 
> Buggery ahead!

Bond pulled away to look at the still-shuddering boy, fingers catching at the tacky cream that had spilt over his lips to lick the salt-sweet seed away.

'You're so darling I could devour you,' murmured Bond, feeling tender. 

'Fool,' said Q in response, too winded to be truly snappish. He rolled over onto his back, placing his hands behind his head, glazed green eyes gazing at the ceiling high above. 

+

Bond watched Q, examing his small ribcage, his little nipples, the slenderness of his hips that made his legs seem longer than they were. The boy's skin was pale, almost like the mother-of-pearl that gleamed inside shells; apart from the sparse dark hair below his navel, and the flush high on his cheekbones, sheared of their residual baby fat, tinted a delicate rose. 

Bond wanted to worship him, to look at him forever, his prick throbbing and straining in his trousers at the thought. He held Q's heated body against his own, his trembling ceasing, and covered his face with soft kisses, sucking at his throat, tasting the salt sweat of his hairless chest. 

When Bond's lips touched the boy's wee nipples, he sighed and was soothed, still shaking somewhat in his grasp, but not from fear. As Q's nipples pebbled under his touch, Bond kissed him roughly, invading his mouth, feeling his soft young skin against his own bristled jaw, flinging one long leg over his shoulder to make a space for himself between the boyish thighs, Q's cock again engorged, lying flat against his shallow stomach. The boy stared up at him, pupils blown black, lips fat and glossed from kissing.

'You like to fuck boys?' he asked, teasing, vulnerable.

'Only you,' whispered Bond, though whether to reassure Q or himself, he wasn't entirely sure.

+

Bond rolled him flat on his stomach, arranging pillows to raise his rear, stroking the small buttocks, soothing him like a mare about to be mounted, his cheeks hairless apart from dark tendrils curling from the tender, untouched cleft. 

Bond greased him, thick fingers slick from a discretely-unlabeled bedside jar, gently rubbing one over the tough but sensitive little furl of Q's anus, earning a moan. He massaged the ring tenderly before sinking a finger inside to open him for penetration, gaining a whimper and sharp nails sinking into the meat of his shoulders.

'The first finger... good boy,' Bond murmured, gentling him. 'Now the second... you're taking my fingers so well, little love.'

Q twitched, his feet spasming, covering his face with his hands as Bond's fingers rooted deep inside him, searching for the nub that would make him thrash with pleasure.

'Just... Get on with it!' hissed the boy, imperious even with fingers up his arse. 

+

Bond obeyed his little master, slicking his cock with a glob of lubricant, then pressing inside of Q, forcing his loosened hole to expand at the intrusion, holding himself just inside the resistant muscle. The bed creaked, and they both moaned, Q at the discomfort of being taken for the first time, despite preparation, Bond at the unbearable pressure, the heat and tightness, urging him to do savage, bestial things.

'I am full of your love,' grunted Bond nonsensically. Q merely bit at Bond's lower lip with his sharp little teeth, tasting the blood bursting on his tongue, clutching tighter to him. Bond grasped him closely, slowly surging, gradual but insistent, pushing himself deeper inside as if to plant a seed deep within. He hooked a finger in Q's mouth, letting him suck at it, bite it, drool over it as they climbed together, cresting, heavy man-bollocks smacking against slim boyish buttocks, seed swelling.

Bond spent himself, spurting deep inside Q's clenching hole, gripping him tightly, shaking with the force of the spasm. The boy thrashed in his arms, semen streaked across his stomach from where he had come while being fucked. 

They lay intertwined, shaking and gasping with aftershocks, Q panting like the young pup he was, Bond feeling about to collapse, his softened member slithering out of the boy, seeping cream from the well-used puffy little hole. He pressed a kiss to it, before kissing Q's mouth, who slapped him away with a half-hearted squawk of outrage.

Ignoring the stickiness, soon to be crusted on skin and sheets, Bond pulled the boy close to him, tucking his curls beneath his chin and kissing his crown again and again. Q let him, soft and shy at his affections, drifting in his arms before surrendering to sleep.


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, faithful readers, I apologise profusely for my long absence from this fic due to a few factors: RL, getting sucked into other fandoms, and writer's block with this fic. I just didn't know how to continue it; I envisioned writing two more chapters, but realized that wouldn't be enough to resolve all the threads of this story, and then even broaching it again became to intimidating. 
> 
> I'm a bit rusty with the characters, just FYI. 
> 
> Many thanks to Siobhandragonsmother, who has left always left thoughtful comments, and reminded me that this story was not finished, that there were people who still wanted to read more and gave me some great ideas. I really appreciate being motivated to write this again :)
> 
> As always, enjoy lovelies!

+

Miss Eve Moneypenny tapped her silver spoon, cracking open the shell of her hard-boiled egg. Though her eyes were fixed on the china plate before her, she was supremely aware of the presence of both her pupil and his guardian, the master of Skyfall, seated across from her. 

Q's cheeks were rosy and his eyes gleamed behind his spectacles, equal parts imp and seraph; his thick grey woolen jumper was not high-necked enough to hide a bruise-mark on the side of his throat. The boy looked as if he had been mauled in the night, and casting her gaze to Commander Bond, drowing the bitter dregs of his coffee, Eve suspected she was not half wrong. The man had the look a well-fed lion, an indolent self-satisfaction suited to the king of beasts, with enough of a predatory eye to call to mind a fair-haired Satan. 

Could the other inhabitants of Skyfall truly be blind to the travesties occurring under their roof? Kincaide and Mrs Kincaide broke their fast while Q chattered blithely about his plans for various perfumes and pomades, of his plans to travel accompanied by his 'Uncle James' to France and Italy in coming years, perhaps even to the outposts of empire, or America.

Eve was discomfited by this talk – her young pupil, of whom she had grown so fond, was under the corrosive influence of his guardian, a man of wealth, land and military honours, but one who sensed was that foulest of creatures – a sodomite. A lady she was, in bearing if not in name, but a sheltered child she was not; she and other city missionaries were well-acquainted with the vices and acts which occurred between boys and men in shadowed alleyways and on the banks of the Serpentine. Eve did not believe herself to be a priggish spinster like so many other virginal governesses, but she prided herself on recognition of sin and sinners, considering men who took their pleasure with children to be near beyond redemption, in heaven or on earth. 

That Q adored his guardian was plain to see, but this was not so strange, as Eve had seen battered women defend and cling to their drunken tormentors in the most squalid pits of London, denying the aid of others such as herself, and if he had indeed been spirited away from such a den of iniquity by a gallant, handsome man... Surely Q would rejoice in this reversal of fortune, delighted to be the kept boy of his pederast saviour. It did not bear thinking about. 

'Are you going to eat the egg, or are you hoping to divine the future in it?' The words of her employer, her rival for the possession of Q's soul, shattering her dark reverie with a start.

'I do apologise, sir. I seem to be fatigued this morning,' 

'You appeared to be in a trance like a spiritualist on stage, Moneypenny,' teased Q. Eve's heart clenched at his boyishness, as yet untainted. 

'I've had quite enough of such talk, if you please,' said Mrs. Kincaide severely, getting to her feet and bustling off with the dirtied dishes. Bond winked at Q, who stifled a giggle as Kincaide took out his pipe, which he lit and puffed upon placidly. 

Beneath the table, Eve's hands fisted the calf-skin gloves in her lap. Such an immoral state of affairs could not be allowed to continue, regardless of whether it was her place to determine, or not. 

So she vowed to herself, watching James Bond playfully allow his ward to take a puff of his cigar, the toxic fumes of which Q promptly choked on.

+

Q had been gently awakened that morning with kisses pressed to the side of his face, the bridge of his nose and the delicate skin of his eyelids, pouting sleepily to push Bond's crowding caresses away.

'I hope you have a bloody good reason for waking me at the first light of dawn,' he groused, turning over. 

'Ha, first light! It's long past time to rise; nearly quarter-to-nine, my little sleeping beauty – or should I say beast?' mocked Bond, earning himself a drowsy swat to the face. 

Q sighed and closed his eyes, curling a hand between his cheek and the pillow beneath. Bond watched the shadows streaking from his lashes, thick and long as a girl's, before attempting again to rouse his boy-lover.

Q only moaned ill-temperedly in response, but bolted up when he felt Bond rise from the bed.

'Where are you going?' he demanded with a plaintive tone.  
Bond raked a hand over his bristled face with a sigh.

'I'm going to place flowers on my wife's grave. Vesper; no doubt you've seen traces of her here. Some of the locals have been known to swear over a pint that she haunts Skyfall, and perhaps they are not wrong.'

Q watched him warily, fully alert. Bond had never broached the subject of his late wife in his presence, leaving him to glean what he could from the Kincaides and the remnants of woman who had been mistress of Skyfall, bride of James Bond. Bond's voice was even, betraying little beyond exhaustion and ambivalence. 

For a moment, they sat in silence, Q with arms around his sheet-swathed knees before Bond grasped his chin, drawing him close to chastely kiss his mouth.

'I shall see you later, at the breakfast table, or I'm afraid Mrs. Kincaide will flay both our hides and then serve them for luncheon.' Bond paused, pulling a curling forelock out of Q's eyes. 'Your hair is still the hopeless bird's nest I remembered, but nevertheless you are a bonny wee laddie.'

'Eugh,' said Q, shoving him away. 'Stop at once or you'll nauseate me and have to explain my sudden sickness to Eve and Mrs. Kincaide!'

'Heaven forbid,' laughed Bond, taking Q's hand in his own. 'I promise I will return to you much more quickly than the last time we parted, little love.' His words were tender, but his eyes teased.

Without his spectacles, Q's eyes were large and luminous, his lips bruised from ravenous kisses. Bond stood and stretched with his impressively bulging arms behind his head. 

'Later I'll take you on a ride around the estate, although I trust you've have plenty of time to explore it yourself. You do know how to ride a horse, surely Kincaide taught you?'

Q rolled his eyes. 'Yes, of course Kincaide would not miss an opportunity to showcase his steeds, although you may have surmised I prefer domestic activities, or rambling through the grounds on foot rather on the back of great beast-'

Bond's look turned feral, and in one movement he caught up the naked boy into his arms, neatly throwing him over one hefty shoulder. 'Oh, you dislike riding a great beast, do you? Well, my apologies, little prince, but there appears to be no other means of transport available.' 

Keeping hold of his squirming burden with one palm anchored over the swell of Q's buttocks, Bond turned, ignoring the laughter and cries of 'Let me go, you brute!' 

'Not on your life, whelp.'

So subduing his prey, Bond bore them to bathe.

+


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Has anyone watched Penny Dreadful? I've only caught the first episode, but I love lurid Victorian Gothic stuff, and it's created by the dude who wrote Skyfall and Hugo, two of my ultimate favorites. Eva Green is awesome as a dark seeress, but Josh Harnett just looks silly, and his acting prowess rivals Keanu Reeves in Coppola's Dracula. 
> 
> Also, I saw the film Belle a couple of days ago, and even though I'm not really into period romances (despite writing a slash version of one), I was blown away by the story, the acting and the costume porn production design. Plus it's based on the true tale of a mixed-race aristocrat in 18th century England, and seeing the complicated intersection of class, gender and race at that time was fascinating. 
> 
> Ah, right, no more rambling about random things I've watched. So this a long overdue chapter mostly about Bond's feelings and man pain. As it's summer I'm hoping to get back on a regular posting schedule. 
> 
> Thanks for those still reading! Comments are like crack, so please feed the addiction!

Bond stood still in the breeze rustling through the leaves above, a silk scarf knotted at his throat. In one hand he carried a small posy of violets, her favourite flower. 

It had been a long time since he'd visited her grave. It seemed right to do so on a spring day, ripe with possibilities and new beginnings. The marble of her headstone gleamed pearl-grey in the light, crowned with an angel in repose, head bowed and hands clasped in prayer. He recognised the irony in this sculpture; Vesper had been no angel, nor devout in any sense. But he had left the choice to Kincaide, who had done his best to memorialise his passed mistress.

Carved into the stone was the inscription 'Vesper Lynd Bond, Beloved Wife and Daughter'. It said so little, of who she had been, how she had lived, but Bond was no poet, too distraught to demand anything exceptional for the love of his life. 

After a moment of stillness, he bent down, placing the posy on the grassy mound where what had been recovered of her lay, sleeping deep beneath the earth. 

+

He had killed Silva, as he once slew Le Chiffre. He slaughtered the latter in vengeance for destroying Vesper, murdered the first to possess Q, in a frenzy of lust-ridden madness.

Bond's brow furrowed pensively, the web of lines around his pale eyes denoting his age. He was no man of honour, that had been long established; no hero or saint bearing Christian mercy to his foes.

But Vesper... She he had forgiven, and made peace with long ago, though only of late he had become aware of his softening, his change of heart where once there had only been bitterness and resentment at her betrayal. 

As for the child she had carried in her womb, seed of his loins or no, he would have reared and cherished the child, son or daughter. But he never had the chance to tell her so, before she leapt from London Bridge to the foul murky water of the Thames below.

He touched her headstone, brushing it free of dirt. Softly, tenderly, almost a caress. What would she have thought of him now, enraptured with a boy, a mere child, less than half his age? Q, who had caught his eye with his androgynous beauty, long lashes and dark curls, whose sharp wit and keen eye had reminded him of her. 

But Q had proved to be no Vesper surrogate, but a youth of his own desires and dreams, fancies and whims, with a sweet yet acidic tongue. He was his own man, and Bond loved him. 

+

Q rode Walter, the gentlest pony in Kincaide's stables, a strikingly coloured horse, with mottled white-grey flanks and a dark mane. He had been afraid of the horses, when he first arrived, but Walter had won him over with his sweet disposition. Q rewarded him with a lump of sugar, an apple or a carrot stolen when Mrs Kincaide wasn't watching, alert with her hawk eyes.

He came upon the figure of Moneypenny, walking along the woodline, a lace-trimmed parasol in hand. Q called out to her and dismounted, leaving Walter to graze while he and Eve promenaded, arm in arm.

+

Bond had forgiven himself as well, for desiring Q with a ravenous hunger, falling upon his unblemished body like a lion on prey, sodomising the boy savagely while he writhed and whined beneath him. He raised his face to the sky, feeling the warmth of the sun upon his weathered face, as if seeking absolution.

When Bond opened his eyes, he was surprised to find himself blinking away tears. He hadn't shed tears in years, not even when Vesper had jumped, when he faced the world with a stony, stoic silence. He was becoming soft, all because of that bewitching boy. If he hadn't lost himself to Q, he would have never confronted sorrowful memories, never sought to pardon others or to release himself from the binds of the past.


	26. Chapter 26

+

Q had begun to write a story, one quite silly to be honest; a kind a romance between a red-gold-curled Irish maid by the name of Brigid Rose and her dark-haired mistress, the Lady Veronica Yves. He was fully aware that the piece was both absurd and obscene, and that Bond would mock him mercilessly should he ever find out...

Q shuddered at the thought. No, what he wrote in this leather-bound journal – an exact replica of the one he used to work out his perfume formulas – would remain under lock-and-key, else he would be mortified for the remainder of his life. He blushed while he wrote of their Sapphic liaisons, but wrote them compulsively nonetheless. He had their entire history drawn in his mind; Brigid had become a lady's maid under an assumed surname to seek vengeance on the Yves family, who had disgraced her mother and banished her from their household...

When Lady Veronica discovered her lover's treachery, she almost dismissed Brigid, but thought better of it... Instead, she took Brigid by force (although Q was not entirely sure of how one woman ravished another), savaging her like a succubus with animalistic passion, yet rebuffing her love...

Q was equally appalled and aroused at the depths of his own depravity; evidently, being kept as a catamite to an officer and a gentleman of the Crown was not enough. He must supplement this deviance with stories to rival the most sordid of French photographs and erotic prints, and about women, a creature which he was not, nor one whose ample charms held any personal appeal. Yet he found the image of two women together, erotically embracing... provocative, and pleasing, to say the least. 

Feeling deliciously indecent, he wondered if Eve had ever... No, surely not, she would find such an idea beyond the realms of nature and God's will. Severine, sweet Severine, the only mother and elder sister he had ever known, who alone had called him 'little Nemo', his name before he fell into Silva's hands. Likely Nemo was not his name at birth either, but one bestowed on him by the orphanage master, for what mother would name her child 'no-one'?

Although, he reflected, ironically he was a nobody, a no-name for much of his short life, little but a shifting, identity-less entity – orphan, street Arab, margery... 

+

Bond stole up behind him, quiet as a panther with an eye on unaware prey, surprising him with a kiss on the nape of the neck, lightly flicking Q's darling little duck's tail with his tongue. 

Q squawked indignantly, batting him away. 

'Why is my little kit so deep in reflection, hm? What is he pondering so intently beneath his mop of curls?' asked Bond, wrapping his arms loosely around the boy to peer over his shoulder.  
Q slammed the cover shut and snatched it to his chest, suddenly self-conscious, cheeks flaming red. Bond clicked his tongue and shook his head, effortlessly wresting the book away with the advantage of his height and strength. 

'Are you being a naughty whelp, a badly-behaved little boy?' he asked, flipping through the pages idly before one particularly salacious scene caught his eye. 

'That book is my personal possession and I demand you return it, this instant!' commanded Q, his voice faltering. 

Bond ignored him. 'My, my, darling Q, I didn't think you had slightest interest in the fairer sex.'

'I don't!' he protested. 'I just amuse myself by writing foolish little stories of unnatural lusts. One can hardly blame me for my fair share of experience in such matters.'

Bond drew the boy into his arms, stroking his head, his face, so young, yet so solemn. Taking Q's face his hands, he kissed him, whimsically on the tip of his nose, tenderly on his ripe bud of a mouth. 

Q sighed, opening his lip under the onslaught of Bond's advances. 

'You silly little imp! I don't mind you writing the filthiest of fictions so long as you give me leave to read them. I'm sure I shall adore the scandalous amour of Lady Veronica and her bonny Irish lass.'

Q burrowed his face in Bond's scratchy, warm neck, inhaling the citrus-smoke-whiskey-soaked scent he'd concocted for him only recently. 

'I wish you wouldn't tease me so. I feel like such a child when you do, entirely unworthy of you.'

Bond stilled in his caresses, drawing Q back so he could look him in the eyes, his pale gaze serious. 

'You must know I am devoted to you, I worship you; that if I could, I'd spend hours examining the perfection of your toes, tempted to devour them...'

Q wriggled impatiently on his lap. 'Please, no cannibalism!'

Bond laughed, eyes crinkling with affectionate amusement. 

'How can one be both so devilish and divine? Oh Q...'

+

The boy stilled suddenly, turning around to face him. 

'I think I shall tell you now, for there is no reason not to.'

Bond, distracted, caught Q's fist his grip and nuzzled it, admiring the elegance of his fingers.

'What, dearest?'

'My name is Nemo Moore, at least as far as I am aware. I was abandoned at a Roman Catholic orphanage, a rarity in London. I haven't the faintest clue who my parents were, or my extended family. Perhaps the Sisters named me, although 'Nemo' is hardly Christian. But I felt – you should know, as much as I do, about myself, who I am. Which I recognize is very little –'

Here Q's speech was cut off by a kiss. 

'I don't give a damn if your name is Quinto or Nemo or Charles Fraser-Smith. You are Q, my Q, parfumier extraordinaire, my ward and heart-of-my-heart –'

Q groaned at Bond's uncharacteristic effusiveness, but blushed bashfully nevertheless. 

'Yes, yes, we are madly in love, and shall live happily at Skyfall together, even when you are a doddering old man...'

Bond's arms tightened around him. 'And you are a bright young thing?' 

'Yes. Even then, although others may question my judgement. And you shall take me on an unofficial honeymoon to Paris and Florence and Amsterdam.'

'Absolutely everywhere, from Vienna to Lisbon to Madagascar. I think you would like America, Q. New York City is almost as grand as London, but falls somewhat short, of course.'

Q swatted him. 'Ever the patriot.'

'Until death do us part.'

Q wrapped his arm around Bond's neck like a limpet, tilting his face to be better kissed. Bond caught him up in his arms as he stood, not nearly as easy as a year before – the boy had grown considerably taller, if not wider. 

'Take me to bed, Bond,' he demanded sleepily. 

'As you command, Q,' he murmured, planting a tender kiss on the rumpled forehead. 

But Nemo Moore – better known to his familiars as 'Q' – was fast asleep.

+

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all, folks. I know it might not have been the ending you hoped it was, but that's all I have in me in terms of wrapping up this story. 
> 
> In any case, many thanks for your support and for reading. I hope you enjoyed the ride as much as I did!


End file.
